a/n: i'm just gonna say something first: a lot of this is probably inaccurate. i've never been into kpop as much as i am now with blackpink, and google wasn't too particular helpful with the insider secrets of trainee life so i'm pretty much guessing my way around.

and after rosie's latest solo magazine's interview on her, my background here with her and music isn't too accurate either but this is a work of fiction so sue me

anyways, im done defending myself for now so i hope you guys enjoy this chapter more than the last

Rosé likes music.

Actually, that's not true. The word "likes" is a massive understatement.

At the age of fourteen she has already mastered playing the piano, she's completely in love with her guitar, and she sings in both her church's and school's choir. Not once in her entire life has she ever consider her love for music a hobby. To her, it's her dream. Nothing else comes remotely close.

But if we are talking about her hobby, then she would probably have to say it's drawing.

She draws so much and in every spare chance she gets that in total, she has to have at least ten sketchbooks in her possession. And around the sixth book, she had found it more efficient to dedicated one entire shelf in her bookshelf to only them. If you were to flip through each completed page of every one of these books, you could even see her gradually improving process through the years. Drawing isn't her passion like music is, but she loves it.

And really though, she has to thank Jisoo for that one.

Because despite her collection of sketchbooks that, if stacked up on top of each other, is taller than her own dog, it's ironic that the number of filled pages doesn't even compare to the place where most of her drawings took place. In fact, most of these doodles haven't even been on actual paper. Ever since her revelation at the age of six, Rosé has considered her own skin her only real canvas.

Her usual boredom in class has — and continues to — almost always lead to her doodling all over her hands and arms to pass the time. She's not the only one with ink blotting her skin, of course, but the amount of tiny words and drawings she sees on the arms of her classmates never seem to come even close to amount of space Rosé takes up on her own self. And if Jisoo minds it, he has never said or shown anything to imply so. Instead, when Rosé starts her usual game of seeing how much space she can fill on her forearm with blue-colored roses in the time span of her geometry class, Jisoo replies in purple ink, filling in all the spaces she left empty with his own hearts and Pikachus.

Sometimes, he even leaves emoticons and messages of encouragement, jokes, or puns in Korean that Rosé doesn't quite understand. She always laughs anyway, and makes sure to let Jisoo know that with an lol or a weirdly drawn emoticon scribbled somewhere around it.

She feels as though they get each other even though they have never actually seen each other, even if it's just through sloppy, broken sentences in Korean and drawings of cartoon rodents. It's fun and even a little bit heartwarming to know that Rosé has someone to talk to that can make her smile without even knowing it.

She enjoys talking to this Jisoo person, and she can only hope — really, truly hope — that the feeling is mutual.

One day, Rosé notices that Jisoo is beginning to fade, and so does the ink on Rosé's skin with him.

Maybe Rosé is being dramatic. Jisoo isn't completely gone, but his lengthy replies, jokes, and cute drawings of animals or Pokémon characters are beginning to shrink.

Literally.

Where Rosé would roll up her sleeves on a particularly hot day and find a Wobbuffet almost the size of her entire forearm with the Pokèmon's signature catchphrase scribbled beside it in bold letters and excessive exclamation points, she instead begins to find just small drawings that are no larger than the size of her own fingernail in its place. These seem to integrate themselves in their daily scrawls to each other and become the new usual until the amount of them, just like with the size, begins to slow down to only a single new drawing on her skin every other day. Then every two days. Then less and less, to the point where it becomes a rarity to find one.

It doesn't stop her from constantly anticipating and searching, however.

She starts to worry when she receives no response from Jisoo for several days. Eventually, she finds a tiny message on the inside length of her middle finger, right between her index, saying look on your thigh. Before, Rosé would have had no difficulty locating anything Jisoo wrote to her. It was always too big, on too obvious spots that she couldn't have missed it if she tried. But now, she finds the drawing high up on her thigh on a spot no one but herself could see.

(Not unless she took off her pants in front of a public crowd, anyway.)

From then on, they begin to speak somewhat more frequently again (though still not as much as before), and she starts to notice something. Rosé finds all following marks only in inconspicuous spots, leaving her previously filled arms and legs completely devoid of any marks or blemishes. It's just like how she had discovered the mystery behind these soul marks when she herself makes the connection that Jisoo didn't want her messages to be seen anymore.

For a sentimental person such as Rosé, it's honestly really sad. And an even bigger hit to her self-esteem comes when the people at school eventually begin to notice her lack of marks.

She has always been more of the shy, quiet type of girl in class and so any form of extra, unwanted attention she garners has never seemed to slip by unnoticed by her. Among her peers, she definitely has built up a reputation for herself as a result of her markings. And really, she can't blame them; the amount of ink covering the expanse of her skin is always to the point where there is more purple and blue than anything else.

(Honestly though, she never minds the extra attention when it comes to this. She's proud of the back-and-forth she and Jisoo have, so haters be damned if she decides to come into school proudly wearing her Pikachu characters and roses.)

But when she begins to come back with not even a single blotch of color, it of course begins to spark some questions and extra stares from the drama-obsessed teenagers of her high school. Even though she feels her nerves stabbing at her underneath all the scrutiny, she says nothing and ignores it all for a while. She even swaps out her short-sleeved shirts for long-sleeves whenever she can, but something like that is hard to avoid when changing in the girl's locker room or for cheerleading practice. She also feels a bit funny when she decides to wear a cardigan in tank top weather to cover the fact that her skin is clear and flawless, and that she feels embarrassed about it. They must live in an odd world, indeed.

She lives in her perfect (far from it), feigned-oblivious bliss for about a week until someone works up the nerve to finally ask her. It's none of the kids who have been staring at her, though, since none of them would dare nor would she even feel the need to tell them. It's her friend, one of the other cheerleaders on her team and a fairly close classmate. She brings it up suddenly during a previously quiet study session with a couple of their other friends in the library, and immediately all of their attention is off of their work and instead on her.

Rosé shouldn't be surprised when it's asked and truthfully she isn't. She's been expecting this question from someone, anyone for days now, but she doesn't even know the answer herself. Why doesn't she have anymore soul marks? Really, she'd like to know the answer just as much as they do. But she doesn't say any of this. To her friends, she just feigns nonchalance and shrugs, and goes straight back to her work. No one presses her further.

She doesn't actually work, though. She spends the next hour staring blankly at the words on her textbook, unfocusing her eyes and watching the words blur together as the all-too-familiar feeling of confusion floods her mind.

The longer she lets herself fall back into her thoughts, the more it starts to make her realize how clingy she's being to this person that she has never even seen before. It's also giving her a headache and she can't think straight anymore, so she pushes her earbuds into her ears and presses play on her phone.

The music succeeds in washing away most of her worries and she spends most of the next few months drowning herself in it and practicing the guitar. The stares and murmurs eventually stop as well, and everything seems to go back to normal.

Everything but Jisoo.

Because even with Ed Sheeran or Jason Mraz singing softly in her ears, or her fingers plucking at her guitar strings until they're raw and calloused and she can still hear the chords to Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me playing even long after she's finished, she still can't seem to break the habit of checking every expanse of her skin everyday for a familiar drawing of a yellow mouse-looking creature with red cheeks and a letter W smile.

When Rosé is fifteen, she decides to chase her dreams.

Not like she hasn't been already doing that with her relentless hours spent into practicing her singing and playing ability and all, but she makes a pretty damn big leap in it. And thank God for everything, especially this, because she makes it.

Her first steps through the doors of the company are completely unfamiliar for her, not to mention the entire country as well. She has only ever visited her parent's native home a total of four times in her life, each time staying no longer than a week or two. But still, this is the first time she has ever stepped off the plane into South Korea that she no longer has to call it her parent's old home. Now, it's her own.

A year has passed and communication with Jisoo never did go back to normal. She'll admit, it actually made Rosé pretty lonely for a while just sitting around and waiting for a response to a joke she made days ago and she never really did get over it. Instead of dwelling on it, though, it gave Rosé more time to focus on her schoolwork and, eventually, realize what she really wanted to do: become a singer. But she's not gonna lie, the first thing she had thought of in the midst of her celebration with her family about her acceptance into the company was still Jisoo.

Because finally, after all these years, they were on the same ground. But who knows with the strict schedule Rosé has heard about for trainees that she herself will soon have if they would even ever get the chance to meet anytime soon. They're soulmates, so they should be bound to meet eventually, but what if it's not for another couple of years? What if she's old and her career is dwindling by then? What if she's already given up? She's signed a contract, she knows very well of the five-year dating ban she has willingly trapped herself under. It could be years, decades, until they meet.

So the next time she picks up her blue pen, she doesn't mention it to Jisoo. Instead, she presses it to a previously common canvas, her forearm, and draws a flower with a smiley face on it.

But that was before she left, hours ago before her flight. And now, when she's walking through the doors of the new company, her eyes flicker down to it and she hopes Jisoo has seen it. She hopes Jisoo likes it.

"You must be Roseanne?"

The sudden voice manages to pull Rosé out of her reverie successfully, though maybe even a little bit too much that she jumps in fright and nearly lets her phone slip out of her hand to the ground. She definitely wasn't expecting to be hearing such perfect English so soon after arriving here. Still, she lifts her shocked gaze to a shorter girl standing before her with her hands crossed on her chest and a friendly smile on her lips.

"Hi," she says, "I'm Jennie. I'm here to help show you around, and, you know," she flashes a teasing smirk, "be your first friend?"

She seems totally cool, from her full black outfit, dyed-blonde tips, and cat-like eyes that match the teasing smirk on her pink lips. Unlike Rosé, she seems like she totally fits in with the dark, mysterious, hip-hop vibe of their company and Rosé admittedly starts to feel a bit self-conscious. Nevertheless, she grins, completely overjoyed at the fact of having an English-speaking friend here. After all, her Korean isn't exactly the best it could be.

But it's definitely better than it would be, she thinks to herself, thanks to Jisoo.

She introduces herself with her first name first, then middle name in case Jennie would prefer calling her "Chaeyoung" (a name only her family and Jisoo call her), then last. Jennie sh