(…)

her name is kim sejeong and she’s a smiley kid. sunny takes a liking to her immediately. as does the rest of korea, hailing her god sejeong and throwing her to the highest ranks of produce 101 from the start. she’s seen as some sort of light, a beacon of talent and manners and happiness.

“she’ll do well,” taeyeon mumbles. the announcement of kim sejeong once again ranking first place among the nation’s producers rings solidly in her ears. sunny mumbles her agreement. the girl on screen is crying, her voice a whimper as she thanks everyone for voting for her. sunny half turns away from the tv to see taeyeon’s droopy eyes set firmly on the screen. “so long as she doesn’t let the industry eat her up and spit her out.” her voice is thin and tired, and sunny agrees again, only this time it’s a silent nod that voices her thoughts.

sejeong sits on the throne and leads the surviving girls into a bow for the nation’s producers.

(…)

sejeong is second overall, making it into the final eleven. jeon somi, a jyp kid, outranks her the final episode, growing into all the expectations that were planted on her from the get-go. sunny is happy for the girls that make the cut. she’s sad for the girls that don’t. this time it’s tiffany that accompanies her on the couch. the other girl is crying in her hands, applauding and cooing her praises for how proud she is. sunny wants to make fun of her but she feels the prickle of tears in her own eyes and keeps shut.

seohyun finds the two of them cuddled together, teary eyed and a mess. rolling her eyes, she sets a bag of takeout on the coffee table and gives them both an exasperated sigh. “this is why i don’t watch shows with you two anymore.”

(…)

yoona video calls from china a few days later. “did you see the finale,” she asks. somehow the nation’s top girl group never fails to become obsessed with the industry’s latest talk-of-the-town, almost always falling for survival program hype as soon as they begin airing no matter how busy their schedules are. “almost all the girls i liked made it!”

sunny has her computer in her lap and is almost thrown off her bed when tiffany slides in next to her, face too close to the screen. “me and taetae were really rooting for somi-ah! we were into sixteen last year, she’s practically our child at this point. we practically raised her.”

“you say that about every young female idol these days.” yoona’s voice cracks from the bad connection. “i thought arin from oh my girl was your and taeyeon unnie’s child.”

“they’re all our children,” she insists. sunny pushes her with an elbow and fits herself away from the edge of the bed, back to reclining against her pillow. “besides,” tiffany continues, “these girls need a mom or two on the inside with how tough being an idol is.”

“one can only hope it’s not as taxing on them as it was for us,” yoona agrees.

sunny wants to into the conversation, say that it’s still taxing for them even in their nine years of seniority. it’s still hard and they’re still worked to the bone. taeyeon’s droopy eyes resurge into her mind, and she wants to say that it’ll always be hard for them, that this industry will never learn not to drain the life out of every single entertainer that wants a splurging career. but, she figures the two of them know that, no matter how much they choose to ignore it.

(…)

yuri sometimes asks sunny to take drives with her. she agrees only because she knows how much she misses yoona when she’s away filming dramas and movies and more dramas.

the taller girl plugs her ipod into the aux cord, turning the volume the loudest it’ll go before she decides on a song to play. “if you play even a fraction of a second of your stupid mediation audio i’m leaving.” yuri snorts and sticks her tongue out at her.

“i wasn’t planning on it but your attitude makes me want to just out of spite.”

often times, especially in the earlier years of her career, she was praised to the high heavens about how nice and friendly she seemed. on camera, the mcs would make a joke, sunny would laugh because she was required to (she had taken notes from all the hate comments jessica got when she was caught stone-faced and neutral), and then she’d get the look of ok from her manager: yes just like that, his expression said. in reality she was one of the more stronger members in both looks and in personality, a fact that even their fans had picked up on.

her glare forced yuri to bite her tongue and clear . “just kidding,” she sighed. yuri starts up the car and begins to turn out into the road. her fingernails make a clicking sound when she decides what song she wants to play.

the playlist starts. some amercan songs pop up, a japanese song is thrown into the mix. there’s a lot of songs from their label-mates, red velvet being the biggest offender; yuri is their self-proclaimed number one fan (similar to how tiffany and taeyeon fantasize about mothering a billion girl group idols, yuri and yoona have a thing going, demanding the other girls call them yeri’s moms). the last notes of one of these nights fade out, and the car is suddenly rocking back and forth from the loud blast of noise shooting out of yuri’s (broken, mind you) speakers.

hana! dul! set! net! mic check! 1! 2!

yuri hoots and rocks back and forth with the beat. she sings along in a way sunny knows would call forth hundreds of comments scolding her. asking her how she could possible call herself a singer when she sounds like that. not like it hasn’t happened already in the many times yuri has set her sights on having fun and acting goofy.

someone looks at them while they’re stopped at a light. the music is loud enough for other people around them to feel in their own cars. the bass shakes ping pongs back in forth in sunny’s chest. it’s so loud she can hardly make out the exact lyrics that are being sung, more of an incoherent echo snakes its way into her ears and rattles her brain.

“at least pretend like you’re having fun,” yuri hollers over the music.

sunny feels bad. she does, she really does. as much as she calls yuri the bane of her existence and a big pain in her , she does end up enjoying these moments when it’s just the two of them, hanging out together without a care in the world. it’s private and intimate (yuri got tinted windows for a reason), and she should feel as if she’s able to act herself. act messy and carefree. but she’s tired, and her back has been hurting, and people are talking. talking about the downfall of snsd. they lost a member and there are so many other girl groups ready to take their place, younger and fresh, ready to be dusted and molded into exactly what the public wants. and it’s dumb of her to be thinking about all of this now, but she is, and it’s been forming a knot in her stomach for the past couple of weeks.

we are the dream girls,

dream girls

chasing our dreams, dream girls

there’s enough time, don’t rush

trust yourself, don’t give up

sunny vaguely thinks about ioi. thinks about how mnet groomed them, put them out on a platter for the korean public. the nation’s girl group, articles called them. those eleven girls, all young and full of determination and hope – they remind her of her when she was young and full of determination and hope. when it was the nine of them against the world. she hopes they don’t burn themselves out.

innocently searching the web, reading articles about whatever people cared about these days, sunny remembers coming across an article about the eleven girls. they’re lucky that they get any more than four hours of sleep – the article made it plain and clear they were being overworked. time was of the essence; they’d disband within the year, but it was upsetting. she remembers when she was lucky to get a wink of sleep.

we are the dream girls,

dream girls

hang in there a bit more,

dream girls

don’t mind being a little bit late

over & over,

follow your fever like that

the song ends and an intense hip hop song follows. sunny breathes in and breathes out. she had felt like a mother in that moment, and suddenly it made sense why tiffany and taeyeon and yuri and yoona talk so much about rookies and are are protective of them. naïve and young, these young girls needed people to look after them.

she promised herself to be even more supportive and doting next time she talked to a hoobae group. not like she isn’t doting already, but she’s going to make that much more of an effort.

heaving a breathe, sunny gulps down all the negativity and raps along with yuri. she gets all the lyrics wrong and yuri cackles at all her dumb adlibs, but it’s a good time.

(…)

a friend – a friend of a friend of a coworker, to be exact – is head down on the cool table. drinks are splattered every which way; some right side up and some down on their sides. it wreaks of booze, and sunny is most sure the scent latched itself onto her clothes.

“he’s an interesting guy,” the friend of a coworker had said. he’s handsome enough that if sunny wasn’t so blatantly uninterested in dating, she could’ve forced being attracted to him. “he’s been pestering me for months now about setting the two of you up and i finally cracked, haha.”

the answer had been on the tip of her tongue: no. she had better things to do than to make nice with strange men who were friends of a friend of a coworker that were interested in her. she’d been on many other blind dates and they had all gone the same way. it’d be a hassle having a boyfriend anyway or at least that’s what taeyeon kept telling her and all her other members.

but, someway somehow she is here, in this very moment, with said friend of a friend of a coworker. he had drunken himself into a stupor, quiet and polite at the beginning of the evening, loud and obnoxious an hour later. an hour after that he fell quiet again, only this time his eyes were hazy and unfocused. sunny should feel bad. she does feel bad. she knows the only reason he drank so much was so gain the courage to associate and charm her. her, sunny of the nation’s biggest girl group. her, one of the most influential people in the music industry.

a shame the date didn’t go as great as he had hoped. regardless, sunny didn’t want a second date to begin with. a nice guy at heart, he just didn’t click with her; a whole three hours into the date and not once did she feel like she was having fun.

some part of her wants to force herself to like this shy, sweet man with enough wealth to support a family and enough good looks to woo the press if their supposed relationship ever came to light. he’d make a great family man. her parents would be over the moon to know that their daughter married a man capable of taking care of their daughter and their eventual grandchildren (sunny doesn’t want to have kids but that falls deaf on her parents’ ears). some part of her wants to date this man who would complete the picture perfect ideal her parents and the rest of society has ingrained in her.

the other part of her, some deep place rooted somewhere she can’t quite pinpoint, tells her that’s just crazy talk. a complete joke.

sunny of so nyuh shi dae wants a handsome man, not too much taller than herself, that can keep up with her and make her laugh.

but lee soonkyu on the other hand, that’s a different narrative altogether. a narrative she wants to erase. lee soonkyu doesn’t want that picture perfect handsome man. she doesn’t want a man, period.

(…)

hyoyeon asks her how the date went. she says it went great.

(…)

out of all the broadcasting companies, the interior of kbs has always been one of sunny’s favorites. the halls were wider than most, the walls were whiter than most, and for some reason there’s always more life to show; there’s a quiet hustle and bustle that goes on. idols, comedians, mcs, actors, and actresses alike all moving, all talking. a sense of camaraderie is created if only for that little bit of time that sunny’s out in the open in the hallways and not confined to the dressing room. everyone, both old and new entertainers, forge a sense of togetherness when they make eye contact for those 2 or 3 seconds: we’re in this together; i understand how you feel.

sunny personally hasn’t visited the building in awhile due to the nature of her individual schedules. every time she walks through those glass doors she gets flashbacks of the very first time she ever walked through them; when it was the nine of them, scared, unsure, and together. no matter what long it’s been since then, the slight chill of the past always manages to brush up on her. she never perceives it as a bad feeling, but it is a feeling nonetheless and she bites her tongue down to push it to the side.

“they’re in one of the back rooms,” seohyun says. she scrolls through her messages to find the exact destination from a text suho had sent. “they have another hour until they have to go up on stage so we can take our time.”

yoona juggles a bag of convenient store junk food in her hand to pull out her own phone. to seohyun she says, “but i have to leave in thirty minutes so let’s speed up a bit.”

sunny likes exo. sunny should like exo of course, considering they are under the same company; but she likes them more than just on a professional level. they’re fun boys. the dressing room is loud; their promotions are in the earlier stages so they haven’t been overworked yet (that does come later, she knows – and they surely know – from experience), so chen cackles at every poor excuse for a joke suho tells and baekhyun talks over the tv mounted to the wall to tell a story about how he almost burned his ramen last night and kai and sehun bicker about who gets to play what character in a mobile game they like. it’s all good and fun.

yoona left some time ago with the manager, and sunny feels as if she should leave too. she can see d.o and seohyun talking animatedly about what sounds suspiciously like politics. suho catches her eye and chuckles. “are you sure you don’t want to join in on the fun they’re having over there.”

“aren’t you high and mighty over their with your jokes,” she cracks back, making sure to add a smile so that it’s not taken to heart.

he fiddles with his clothes for awhile. “just trying to brighten up your day.” he continues to fix what doesn’t need to be fix, then says, “you seem tired. are you sure you don’t want to head out early.” ah, this is why suho had always been her favorite.

“that sounds like a good idea, but my ride is having the time of her life over.” her eyes narrow comically sharp to seohyun. suho laughs his manner laugh and wrinkles his nose in what most people find to be cute. sunny finds it cute but it doesn’t give her butterflies in her stomach or send heat to her face. it’d be nice, she thinks, to fall in love with a man as well put together as he is.

“kyungsoo,” suho says. his voice is soft but it manages to find its way over to d.o despite all the commotion nine boys and several staff members can create. d.o turns with a look that can only be describes as a deer in the headlights, eyes round and attentive. “let’s not hold seohyun sunbaenim captive with our opinions on the political tension brewing in russia. i think both sunny sunbaenim and seohyun sunbaenim have other things to do rather than babysit us.”

sunny says her goodbye to the room in its entirety with one big wave and bow. seohyun takes it upon herself to go to every person and personally say her farewells.

“if you were tired you should’ve told me,” seohyun whispers. she puts her cap and glasses back on; anyone who knows anything about music would know that she’s seohyun from snsd but sunny doesn’t say that because she herself has only a cap and glasses to ‘hide’ her identity.

“--didn’t want to bother you.”

it’s not that no one recognizes them and more like no one pays attention to them. they don’t have on any fancy stage costumes and there are no hovering managers to give away upon first glance that they are anything more than they seem. the lack of what makes an idol and idol in full lets them slip past the filter of anyone who passes them. they pass many different people. with the end of music bank nearing, many stray idol members pop up from time to time.

“i have to take a piss,” sunny informs by the time they make it to the long hallway and down the stairs. “stand look out.”

“no one is going to hound you in the bathroom,” seohyun says, almost amused at the deadpan humor. she puts her back against the wall by the door anyway, winking with a smile.

it’s with much chagrin that sunny admits she doesn’t like peeing while other people are present. living years of her life in a dorm with eight other girls did little to cure that. she will, under extreme circumstances, bite the bullet if there’s no other choice but in the tiny two stall kbs bathroom ways away from where the rest of the building’s population is clustered together, she thinks she can allow the option for wading it out.

so when she walks in and realizes there’s somebody standing by one of the sinks, it’s decided she’ll pretend to fix her hair or her clothes or her makeup until they leave. the sinks aren’t far apart, they’re practically touching. the plan is to stall until the person walks out; small talk is an absolute no, she wants them to leave, not stay and chat with her. that’s the plan. the original plan. the plan flies out the window when she registers the bright pink, glittery stage outfit and the customized sneakers and the hunched posture the person is wearing. she looks too long, lets her eyes soak in the picture in a way that’s the furthest thing from subtle. they make eye-contact.

kim sejeong is smaller than she looks like on tv. she’s also a heck of a lot tanner, glowing if sunny knew any better. “oh.” her voice is also softer than she would’ve expected. “uh i –”

sunny can’t tell if she’s recognized her or if she’s just flustered from being caught looking un-idol like. eyes red, shoulders squared, body tense.

the restroom is cold, and sunny pushes her glasses down her nose, tilting her head down. she puts her hands in the pockets of her jacket and walks to the sink, turning the facet on for no other reason than to  look inconspicuous. they’re quiet together; the hum of the ventilation and the running sink are all that echo off the walls. there’s a whistling noise too and it takes no time at all for sunny to realize that it’s sejeong’s breathing; she’s obviously fighting a cold.

sunny shivers because of things she’s not too keen on understanding. the frigid temperature mixes with the un-breaking eye-contact and the way this young girl holds herself – crumbled into herself, weak and paper-like.

“chilly, isn’t it?” sunny talks despite herself. “i’ve been telling them to splurge for better heating but they don’t listen to me.” doing this, talking to this girl, a stranger (as much as it doesn’t feel like it) is stupid. stupid in the same way sunny allows herself ten extra minutes of slumber even though she knows she has a schedule to get to; stupid in the same way yuri and yoona used to sneak out during debut to buy snacks from the convenient store; stupid in the same way sooyoung feeds all the other girls’ dogs human food despite seohyun materializing three scholar written articles about why that sort of unnecessary action will be detrimental to the dog’s health in up to three to four years; stupid in the same way stupid can be harmless and benign, but stupid all the same.

sejeong chuckles, and it’s fake to the edge. sunny mutters something not even she’s sure of, and it returns to being quiet.

she walks out with a quick bow, lips turned up in a smile that is once again – fake. “you have a nice day, ma’am.”

seohyun comes in three minutes later to sunny mindlessly rubbing her hands together under the running water.

(…)

two days after that sunny lets her silly thoughts run wild, allowing herself a moment of self-indulgence, typing sejeong’s name into the web browser’s search bar. she watches videos and reads articles and looks at pictures. in the back of her head she comes to the conclusion that this is more than just stupid and silly. a crush blooms in the form of admiration and sympathy and empathy and all the moments sunny was forced to shut her eye for other girls.

at some point it’ll die out, she thinks. she has enough self-control to weed a frivolous crush like this out.

and she clicks on another video.