A/N PLEASE read ending notes!

In the blink of an eye, several weeks pass. 

Life for the majority of all those who exist in relative diameter has begun to, once again, settle into normality, those working folk who find themselves with bills to pay once again resuming their shifts, once again nickel-and-diming it just to make a living. The rain comes and goes, thunderstorms passing overnight to make way for radiant, glittering sunrises in shades of flamingo-pink and the summery tones of yellow. It’s far more simplistic to ignore the lingering curves of consequence that loom around every corner, for most people, than to divulge with them on a day-to-day basis. This way, when times get tough and success falls short, most people are very successful in turning a blind eye to the anxieties that leer off in the distance. Most people, it seems, except for Zitao. 

Those so-called several weeks feel much more like several eternities for him, each day that passes by equally as torturous as the last, days in which he does nothing but lay in bed next to his mother’s urn on his nightstand, the cover balled in his frail little fists, tears half-dried down lurid cheeks. Hours turn into months before Zitao learns how to feel human again, albeit feeling simultaneously shattered while unnervingly whole. For Zitao, the colors he so yearned to see again remained gray and diluted, the joy he wished to feel again more than simplistically absent as each day kissed him upon the lips with the breath of despair. All alone - he was all alone. 

What ing , though, is the fact that he can’t get his mind off of Yifan’s appearance at the funeral. Just what would have been his motive, there? Yifan was no longer fond of him, and, therefore, certainly would not care for the mother of someone he was not fond of. He and Zitao were enemies now, right? 

Still, if he despised Zitao that much - unable to stomach even the sight of him - then why would he have attended such an event that would have required him to be social with those he disliked the most? Why would Yifan have dared to put his pride aside for the sake of somebody that wasn’t himself? That’s not the Yifan that Zitao knows. 

It’s weighed heavily on his mind these past weeks, however, how everybody is faring with his absence when all he’s done is lay in his bed and cry. Is the firm running smoothly, he wonders, and how are the president’s sales doing? He wonders if Jessica was given her position back, now that Zitao was no longer there to threaten it. He wonders, blindly, foolishly, if any of his colleagues at the firm was missing him. 

None of this makes any goddamn sense. Why did the universe deem it apt to do something like this to a person like him, a person who would have done anything it took to change the sharpness of his impending fate? This was all supposed to go properly according to plan - he was supposed to nail this job, was supposed to last within the company walls long enough to reverse his mother’s condition, or even to possibly send it into remission, at the very least. He was supposed to get his mother back. He was supposed to save her. 

He had hoped to close the year off with his mother by his side, with his best friend in tow and, if he were really lucky, a partnership to call his very own and to present to his mother to ask for her son’s hand in marriage. If he could have manufactured his own perfect storybook ending, that would have been pristine. 

When he hears a familiar soft rapping at the quiet of his bedroom door, he whimpers a little bit into his pillow and turns his nose into his sheets, as his best friend slowly comes into his room with a glass of water, an eternally-comforting smile, and a twenty-milligram tablet of Lexapro in his open palm. We’re going to see Mochou’s grave today, his best friend says as Zitao swallows the tablet with a mouthful of water as flavorless as his unplanned future. 

Maybe unhappiness was always meant to plague his path in life.

“Straighten your back.”

Minseo tries - she does, but her figure is too naturally curved for her to present herself as plankboard-perfect as the others. You should have gotten that scoliotic surgery, Seohyun whispers into her ear where they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, inches apart, lined up as eyes trail over their backsides. 

Whack.

She cries out, biting her lip as pain rockets up her back in vicious ebbing like brachial traces, streaking up her nerve endings as white-hot as lightning. It stings - aches, moreover - and Minseo finds herself unable to stomach the resistance that would inevitably save her career as tears gloss down her cheeks. It’s too sharp of pain in too rigid of an area, too sensitive, something she is not used to. I warned you, Seohyun snickers beside her, and Minseo grimaces as the air ripples beside her, the girl’s unfamiliar shriek of pain piercing her ears. 

“I said to straighten your back,” President Wu strides around them to stand front-and-center, the edge of his ruler stick delicately kissing the underside of Minseo’s chin where he lifts her face to meet his. Irritated, however, he shoots a serrated glance to the side as his operatives test his patience once more. “And you,” he gently whaps the ruler stick against the ridge of Seohyun’s shoulder, not roughly enough to damage her but not softly enough to have his intentions conveyed as hospitable. “Speak when you are spoken to, and not a moment sooner. Do not test me.”

Seohyun knew better than to double-cross an order straight from whetted lips, despite having an attitude to her as most young women beneath him tended to. She would learn, in due time, to pipe it down. 

“You will all be on your absolute proper behavior, you will all stand tall and proud to wear my line, and you will all like it,” the president states flatly, harsh and vaguely-snarled. “You will not embarrass me at one of the largest conferences of the year, or you will be terminated right on the spot. Do I make myself crystal clear, ladies?”

The Hunan Conference was always the largest of the year - rather than a display walk, for his clothes to be modeled before thousands of well-endowed gazes, speculative as they critique his flaws. He busts his each year to make sure that everything is flawless for this event, over any other, for this event makes and breaks careers and he will not have his shattered by loose-footed young women. 

Considering his entire repertoire had to shift as his attendance did, also, Yifan does pride himself in just how cleanly and professionally he managed to execute such a shift. There was no uproar, no impending collapse, no question as to why last-minute changes were suddenly made to the overall attendance. 

There were never any complaints, though - Minseo knows very well that she was never originally intended to attend the Hunan Conference, and that gives Yifan every right to be hard on her and whip her into shape, since adequate and average absolutely will not cut it here. 

What stings, though, is Minseo is pretty sure she knows exactly who was crossed out of the attendance to give her the option of stepping in as an understudy. The president very rarely cancels appearances last-minute, unless a model suffers an injury or else suffers rapid termination. To her knowledge, the only person who had become either injured or had been terminated - or both - was one very specific model, one whom she finds herself missing gravely as Yifan berates her and does not go easy on her. Her back stings, her cheeks feel sticky where her tears have glazed them over, and she really wishes she was back to whip the president’s back into order. 

But, as the ruler stick comes down on the back of her right knee and threatens to make her buckle, a test in her true overall balance, Minseo bites back the tears and bites back the acrid words that could ruin her career, because this is just what President Wu does. Only those who have thick skin truly survive his mentoring and his sky-high standards. 

“This is not the time to mess around and slack off ladies,” President Wu snarls with an insipid tone, as though he were scolding a teenager over being caught having unprotected . “The conference is in two-and-a-half months, and, truly, I thoroughly understand that some of you have been in Recreation for far too long and are far too accustomed to slacking off and presenting mediocre, merely-average work, but that will not cut it here. I do not want to hear anymore ing about being stuck in this department and not being promoted to Marketing when you do not even know how to ing stand up.” The ruler stick clatters startlingly to the ground, akin to the crack of ground-shaking thunder as he smacks it down, composure wavering, and threads a hand into his dark, styled hair. “Do it again.”

Minseo knows she is good enough to be in Marketing, and she knows that she is good enough to attend the Hunan Conference. For some reason, though, she can’t seem to truly concentrate, and keeps making small mistakes that she knows wouldn’t normally have been made. It’s almost as though she’s misplaced the spark within her to try her hardest and perform at her best - as she is sure that many people here have, also. 

She also knows that President Wu is not himself lately.

“Miss Kim,” she hears when her back is turned, abrupt and thunderous, and it causes her to jump and glance over her shoulder. “Straighten your back!”

“I’m trying,” she whimpers as she turns back around and continues walking. She is trying - she does the best she can to arch her posture, to straighten out her spine as her toes touch the floor with each step, and it feels much too pretentious and too mannequin-like as she walks that she craves curling up and crying in a ball, right now, but it is all that she can do to satisfy the president.

“Better,” the president commends, as he moves on from her and onto his next victim, and Minseo immediately releases the breath she had been holding as she trudges down the stairs of the stage and flies to her seat in the pews, shuddering little sobs leaving her like fluttering moths beneath the glow of the nighttime moon. This is just too hard. She knows that she had been walking just fine, albeit a little bit lax and naturally-curved, but she is not built like a stone-hard doll as some other girls are, some who are taller than she and lither than she. 

As Sojin’s warm palm curtains along her upper back, she wipes the tears away and it up. No matter what, one thing will always be very painfully evident around the firm, from now on - that President Wu never acted like this when Yingtao was around. 

Out of sheer worry and heartfelt concern for his best friend, Luhan had suggested that they foreclose on the apartment and move Zitao and his belongings permanently into his home. Zitao had initially refused - saying that the memories of having his mother sleep in his apartment bedroom and sit in his apartment den were far too precious, but Luhan knows that they would only eat away at him until he brooded himself right into a depressive coma. Whether he liked it, or not, Zitao was going to move in with him.

Zitao was given the guest bedroom on the second floor, the only upper floor - one with a crystal-clear outset window with an accompanying countryside view. The sill was forced outward beyond the truss of the wall, a good two feet of space’s worth, creating a makeshift bed, almost. The roomy double bed was positioned against the wall and, therefore, against the window, allowing Zitao the option of either sleeping within the bed or sitting comfortably in the windowsill, hiding with the pastel-peach organza curtains draped back into their holding rings to let the sunlight in. “You could read a book there when you’re lonely and moody,” Luhan suggests on move-in day, a comforting hand on the boy’s bony shoulder. “Or if you’re really mad and want to be alone, you can hide away and just look outside at the sunlight or the rain. That’s why I picked that room for you.”

It’s touching, almost, to think that Luhan cherished him enough to offer him the prettiest room in the house. His best friend’s house is quite large, he knows that well, but Zitao would not consider it large enough to outweigh Yifan’s home. 

Quietly, Zitao lets out a shuddery breath and knits his fingers together in his sleeves and says, “Thank you… for everything.”

What he fails to convey is just how thankful he is that Luhan had stuck by him through thick and thin, had been there when nobody else had to collect the shattered remains of himself after his mother’s passing, had been there with warm, awaiting arms to cradle him and tell him that everything was okay. He was willing to burden his own self enough to allow Zitao to semi-permanently move in with him and live with him, having to put him out of his way to watch over Zitao as though he were a toddler. 

“You don’t even have to thank me,” is his response, as he smiles and ushers Zitao through his front door.

It’s as familiar of a setting as it had always been to him, having been able to recognize it as Luhan’s home, and yet he finds himself unable to force the correlation between himself and the fact that it is now Zitao’s home, as well. It does not yet feel like his home. 

“Sorry if it’s a little bit out of shape,” his best friend comments as he locks the deadbolt and sets Zitao’s suitcases aside near the rosewood velveteen loveseats - a stark difference from Yifan’s immaculate white. Luhan’s home has always been very rustic and warmed with browns and golds, the color white a mere accent within these walls, as Luhan was not nearly as much of a hypochondriac and a neat-freak as Yifan. “You haven’t been here in a while, but I got a new living-area shipment the other day, so sorry for all the moving boxes. I’m returning the other set.”

Zitao still feels much too broken inside, but the idea of living together with his own best friend - the sudden notion that he will never again be alone - is a little bit attractive nonetheless. 

Maybe this will be exactly what he’s been needing.

“What happened to the other set?” Zitao mumbles quietly as he thumbs at the straps of his duffel bag. “I thought it was in perfectly good shape.”

It doesn’t go unnoticed how his best friend hesitates, then, verbally shifting around and causing the floorboards to gently squeak. “Yeah, well - it was,” Luhan begins carefully, but when Zitao glances over at him with tired eyes, there’s a shifty, crooked grin upon his lips, “but a couple of weeks ago, when you were always at Lover Boy’s penthouse, I had a friend over and we kind-of, uh… broke the springs?” 

Stunned, Zitao’s eyebrows raise just a smidge. “What the were you doing? Performing CPR for two hours?”

Luhan does not respond. Zitao shuts his mouth.

“Oh. You were having .”

“Good , at that,” his best friend adds with a snarky little smile. “Anyway, we sort-of busted the loveseat, so I had to order a whole new set so it all matched. He won’t even call me back. What a waste of a good . Alright, well, let’s get these upstairs, shall we?”

Zitao would laugh. Should laugh, that is, but the statement causes unstable, aggravating memories to come flooding back in, and the little teasing quirk of his lips in their corners that could barely be considered a grin completely melts away. Right… he didn’t get to experience that kind of euphoria that Luhan did. Right.

“Tao,” his best friend mutters softly among the quiet of the sleepy townhouse. “I know that look. What’s wrong?”

Well, to put it in quite a simplistic perspective, Zitao feels lost inside. Months ago, as the prospect of beginning to crossdress always reminded him that he did not belong there, he would have done anything he could to somehow earn the money he would be making without having to gallivant around as a lady. He would have done anything to somehow stay financially stable while avoiding possible imprisonment for impersonation. Now, as those months have long since passed and the threat of being persecuted had minimized with each day, Zitao no longer felt terrified of his own job. In fact, Zitao had found himself growing used to such a field of work. Perhaps one could even say that he had begun to like it. 

Which meant that to be forced to throw it all away - to dispose of all of the memories and the clothes that donned him as female and the cosmetics that altered his perspective - feels like losing somebody very important to him. It feels like losing a close friend. 

How is he supposed to stomach losing his mother, his beloved, and his own self? 

“I don’t want to leave her behind,” he acquiesces softly as he assimilates into the newness of rebirth and the uncertainty of what could possibly come from leaving everything he had come to know behind. This kind of thing is tricky, difficult to explain, and even more trying to actually simplify it enough to gain empathy. 

His best friend’s lips part with a soft, damp sound in the silence of the living den, and Zitao feels poorly about needing to be babied so thoroughly. “Tao, you know that I would never force you to leave her behind. We took her urn with us so she could stay in your room - remember?” Luhan offers a crooked little chuckle to try to ease the tension between them from Zitao raising his walls, closing himself off, and Luhan doesn’t like it, “And, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a feeling that that’s not the only thing you’re keeping from me. You can tell me anything, Tao - you know that.”

That is true - while he had been worrying about what everybody else in the world thought about his alter-ego Yingtao, Luhan helped him create her without so much as a cautious head-shake. Luhan had gone out of his way to spend too much of his personal earnings - if Zitao is being entirely honest - on creating a character for Zitao to hide in. Luhan had seen him at his ugliest and additionally at his most beautiful, so the very least that Zitao could possibly owe him would be his honesty.

“I’m sorry,” Zitao admits sheepishly, swiping a hand up to his arm in his shyness. Saying it out loud feels like swallowing a mouthful of glass, “but I… don’t think I can… throw her away.”

It’s not, truthfully, what he would have expected Zitao to say. “I thought you didn’t want to keep her after this.”

He watches, without judgment, as his best friend takes several meager steps across the carpet and lays a palm warmly across the top of the cosmetic box, a rolling-suitcase in an immaculate white which had matched his suitcase set but had been too small to have been used to pack. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know, but… I’m not ready. I’m not ready to throw it all away.”

That’s… shockingly unlike Zitao to say something like that. “Any particular reason?” He questions awkwardly, as though he had just been asked if he could add ice to a customer’s lukewarm soup. 

Indifferently, the boy merely shrugs with his crestfallen countenance as he pouts and turns his eyes away from his best friend. “It’s stupid,” he admits with an offhanded shake of his head, clearly shrugging off his own emotions. 

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Luhan confesses gently, offering a kittenish little simper to cushion the acrid reality that his best friend is struggling to convey. “If it’s bothering you this much to the extent that you can’t even tell me about it, how could it be stupid?” 

“Because it’s really stupid - seriously,” Zitao insists sheepishly, lips pursing into a childish little pout, and if the recent events of the boy’s life hadn’t such transpired, he might have even considered himself in a chipper enough position to laugh. Although it would sting to admit aloud, having the opportunity to wholly unwind with his best friend in a different atmosphere, away from the familiarity and the nightmares, is cathartic. “I mean it.”

“Tao,” the blonde continues to persist, continues to pester him until the truth comes out. “You’re being stupid,” he argues childishly like they’re both eight-year-olds on a sugar-high in the shared bedroom of one of their older brothers. “Tell me. Let me help you.”

The model knows that his best friend has to truly work to get information out of him, has to chip away at the layers of his boundaries and the frigid resistances of his secrecies. He knows that Luhan is not going to back down until he has reached his goal of successfully tearing the boy down and getting him to spill his inner thoughts, but Zitao also knows that when he inevitably does crack that he is not going to be able to stop. 

Then, he turns his eyes back to his best friend. Stares, for an elongated several seconds. There is too much determination in Luhan’s eyes that he finds, too much resistance to backing down, and Zitao knows that this is a battle that he will not end up winning. “Alright, fine,” he breaks, huffing out an exasperated sigh. “It’s…” 

A quiet stare. “It’s?”

Come on, he ushers within himself, forcing that ever-so-familiar pep-talk to get him to crack. Say it. “It’s… Yifan.”

Luhan’s lips part gently in the silence. Yifan? That’s what’s been bothering him all this time? “You’re still hung up on that jackass?” He asks rhetorically, not requiring an answer. Luhan doesn’t particularly like Yifan, but he had withstood the thought of them being together for long enough that it would bring Zitao his happiness. After what Yifan had pulled that day, however, when he had smacked the boy across the face and shouted at him like that, all bets were off. Luhan was no longer able to admire the man’s existence and the joy that he caused his best friend to feel. “Tao, no offense, but he treated you like . He called you all those names the day you were fired.”

Before the older boy has even finished talking, Zitao has already begun to shake his head. He’s wrong. “He treated me like a princess when I was with him.”

“He smacked you.” 

“I used him,” he retorts with an unhappily sharp edge, nothing cruel or harsh but rigid enough to get his point across as their eyes finally meet. “I admit it, okay? I used him for my own personal gain, and I never even considered how it might have hurt him in the long run. You were right all along - I should never have let it get this far, but I did, alright? I did. I was cruel to him when he had only ever been sweet to me. Even when I got myself into trouble, Han, he always talked me down from my episodes and explained to me why what I did was wrong,” Zitao finds his voice breaking toward the end of his monologue, going noticeably hoarse past his normal register. “It feels like… if I throw it all away, somehow, I’ll be throwing away the memories that I took from being with him.”

He pities his poor friend - truly, from the bottom of his heart, Zitao has always been too selfless. He always gives and gives pieces of himself to spare others without ever stopping to consider how it may damage himself in the long run. “Oh, Tao,” he coos gently, reaching forward with cautious, steady hands as he rests one carefully on the boy’s shoulder, not pushing any further. The loss is still much too fresh, for he knows that he should not push Zitao’s boundaries quite yet. He is still on the road to healing. “Even though you’re hurting, you shouldn’t praise him too highly, like this.”

With a soft, almost inaudible sniffle, then, the boy turns his face toward the ceiling as twin glistening, sparkling tears glimmer down his cheeks as he stares at the halogen glow of the lights. They’re not nearly as bright as the studio lights. They’re more warm-toned, too. “I don’t care. It feels like I’ll forget him,” he admits quietly, “if I decide to throw it all away. It feels like… if Yingtao leaves… then he does, too.” 

No matter how many times he and Yifan may have bickered, no matter how many times they may not have seen eye to eye, and no matter how much the handprint across his cheek had stung, Zitao cannot fault him. No matter how many times President Wu may have hurt his feelings in the past, Yifan will always be precious to him in secrecy. Zitao had to bear the brunt of all of Yifan’s criticisms that he was forced to deliver, highlighted by the threat of faulting his reputation, had to bear the brunt of his vulgarities when things became just too much, sometimes, which Zitao could entirely relate to, and loved him all throughout the bumps in the road. Zitao lied to him, deceived him, toyed with him emotionally and intimately, all while manipulating him and going so far as to take money from him. If anything, Zitao could admit that he deserved that single smack. 

“Okay,” Luhan decides curtly, accompanied by a blunt nod of his head as he grips the handle of the cosmetic box. “We won’t throw Yingtao away yet - okay? I’ll put her away, but she won’t get tossed out yet.”

His best friend - now roommate - does not punctuate his idea with a promise, but Zitao knows that he will not betray him. If Luhan decides that they will not throw Zitao’s things away, then Zitao knows that they will remain in the house until he gives the okay to dispose of them. “I know I can’t keep them forever,” he sighs, because having admitted what had been plaguing him these past several days does make him feel stupid, even if his best friend had consoled him into trusting that it was harmless. It’s still silly to want to keep women’s clothing simply for the memories attached, “but I need time. I can’t lose my mom and… and him, too…” 

“I understand. Trust me.”

He can. Zitao knows he can. Luhan would never do anything to hurt him no matter how clamorously the sky may fall down upon them. 

As a mutual compromise, they agree to hole up the cosmetic box and the dual suitcases-worth of outfits in Luhan’s left-most guest bedroom closet, one that Zitao will not be using. This way, the model will be able to live his day-to-day life without having to see the pieces every morning and every night, but they will always be within reach if he truly needed them. 

It’s stupid, but Zitao can’t let his alter-ego go this easily. If Yifan will not speak to him outside of his disguise, then Zitao is not ready to give it up. 

He succeeds in pretending that everything is perfectly fine, blissfully ignorant, as he calls himself, for what feels like several weeks. He is relatively certain that nobody thinks of him any differently, that his countenance is exactly the same as it has always been because not a single lone soul would dare question him around here. Surely nobody has thought any differently of him.

Not that it would have necessarily mattered, for the Hunan Conference is still going to go down without a hitch and his girls are going to perform flawlessly and the show will conclude with a round of unparalleled applause. His newest collection will receive the funding and the support it so earnestly deserves, and his couture will branch out further and further into the uncultured public as it does each and every year.

With an event as prestigious as the conference, this meant that Yifan was forced to call upon his most trustworthy associates and acquaintances to assist himself and his personnel in perfecting each and every little detail. Being that this was the final, not to mention the most important, rehearsal, their performances could not be subpar, nor exceptional - they had to be flawless. 

Normally, at any other show to be featured in, Yifan would employ between fifteen and twenty girls to walk for his brand and to represent him in the face of thousands of cameras - but this is no ordinary show. At the yearly conference, Yifan has to compete against several other lines and couturiers to grip the attention of sponsors and entrepreneurs in the audience in order to gain advocacy over his adversaries. This means that Yifan has to pull underhanded tricks from within his sleeves, including pumping his models full of caffeine and occasionally - legally - cannabidiol to relax their nerves, as well as employing his most trustworthy team members to help them out and to strengthen their skills before the big reveal.

As his girls all sit along the edge of the stage - a half-dressed rehearsal wherein each girl hides their figures beneath baggy, layered sweatshirts and track-pants, yet hoist their feet in their pretty little high-rise pumps to keep their toes arched downward - Yifan finds himself pacing back and forth in concealed anxiety as his associate monologues outwardly, the girls remaining calmly all-ears. 

Kyungsoo and Amber briefly ramble on about the phenomenon of wardrobe malfunctions, since each and every one of them has more than likely experienced one or more while in the middle of a walk. Being that Yifan’s lineup was subject to an unexpected alteration, Yifan was forced to add some of the higher-ranked Recreation models to fill the gaps, who likely have not experienced such a troubling matter. It’s self-explanatory, really - “whatever you do, don’t freak out,” Amber tells the girls, “and as best as you can, ignore it. Keep going, the entire way, like nothing happened.”

“Malfunctions happen all of the time,” Kyungsoo reassures them gently, carefully, with a warm grin and experienced words as he spots some newer, slightly-concerned gazes. “A bra snaps, a shoe-strap unbuckles, a chiffon sash loosens, a diamond brooch falls off - they happen to even the best of us. How you deal with it, though, is what makes you professional. Confidence is key, girls, and Mr. Wu wants to see each and every one of you prove that to him up there on that stage.”

“This is a very crucial time to avoid all catastrophes, if physically possible,” the seamstress laughs, then, crossing her built arms over her chest. Amber had stepped down from walking in the conference just this once because President Wu had very much needed the help in organizing all of the little details, even if he had never asked for her accompaniment directly. Amber could see the stress all over his face when he began picking his models to cast, could see how overwhelmed he felt behind the stern gloss of his eyes. 

“A piece of information that may be crucial to hold onto, however,” the girls hear as a man stands from the front row of the black-box seats, casually suave and lithe as his full height stretches out, familiar as ever as he moves closer to the president’s other personnel, “is that something that you might think had remained unnoticeable - say, a slight shift in your weight, maybe a borderline roll of the ankle, or a split-second moment of doubt when you almost trip on your own heels - was more likely than not amplified in the cameras. These cameras pick up everything - even things that you might not realize that you did. Meaning, if you think that you are going to falter or make a mistake, immediately stop thinking. Keep going, no matter what you may think.” 

This catches the president’s attention, however, and Yifan pauses in picking at the skin on his lower lip as he strides over to the man. “The majority of you may not have been gifted the pleasure of crossing paths with Mr. Shin before - a connoisseur of videography, a man who… knows the ins and outs of live-screening, and somebody whom I would trust thoroughly to help direct all of you for this conference.” 

Within the walls of KW Enterprises, they were never Yifan and his best friend Kevin - here, they were always President Wu and Mr. Shin, partnered-in-crime entrepreneurs by day and devoted best friends by night. The many memories of Yifan breaking down in his penthouse and requiring the comfort of his best friend - as well as the time Kevin had found himself out of a job when a different couturier’s show that he had been helping with had fallen through, Yifan’s acquaintance Chaerin had recruited him and offered him a higher salary and healthier accommodations for his expertise - would remain a dusk-laden secret whilst reputations were at stake.

For all that President Wu has done for him, Kevin knows that he holds it within himself to repay him with at least this degree of assistance. 

Seeing as his speech has thoroughly sunken through the thick skins of the young women, Kevin gives a curt nod of his head and glances back at the president. “Should we run through a quick walk? Just so that I can get a feel of what exactly needs improvement.”

Kevin does not need the approval - he knows, as well as Yifan does, that the reason he is here is to critique them in action. He cannot very well perform the job he had been called upon for while the girls are seated. 

However, the response he gets… is certainly not that which is typically associated with President Wu. Rather than a very formal invitation to take over, the president falters where he’s been pacing divots into the polished flooring, digs one of his fingernails into the flesh of his lower lip, and nods, with shadowed, unfocused eyes. He seems to be almost unable to concentrate, as though he cannot stop thinking. Or, perhaps, overthinking. 

The atypical reaction causes Kevin to falter. He frowns, just a little, and the crease between his eyebrows deepens as he stares at the president for just a moment. 

“Alright, ladies,” the photographer announces without taking his gaze off of his best friend. “We are going to run through the routine once more - start from the very beginning, please. Take your places.”

It is simply clockwork, at this point in time - these are young women that have been thoroughly and meticulously trained to adapt to such a professionally tight schedule, especially one which is always subject to sudden last-minute adjustments. Given that they have been run through what could quite literally be considered boot camp, it takes no longer than several compressed seconds for the girls to rise and take their places upon the stage and, in the blink of an eye, in perfectly synchronized order. Kevin finds himself startlingly impressed, but keeps his thoughts to himself, for Yifan’s work is not meant to appeal to the public as impressive - this is simply the bare minimum of quality that is expected of President Wu. 

Yifan says nothing as the practice walk commences and the girls step in time with each other across the stage, as Kevin’s eyes seamlessly trace each and every figure with each turn and each sway. True enough to his own word, Yifan’s women are rapidly approaching the epitome of flawlessness, cleanly and effortlessly resisting falter with each step. Kevin would have expected nothing less than true perfection from his hardworking, tireless best friend. 

However, what he deems acceptable and, quite frankly, impressive, is clearly different from what Yifan deems acceptable and impressive. 

“Stop,” he hears, a startling loud that cuts through the impermeable silence which had filled the theater. The girls jump in a translucent medley of shock and bewilderment, a clear indication that, truly, nothing had gone wrong, but the expression on the president’s face would vividly state otherwise. He is unsatisfied, irked rather than defeated, and visually thwarted, as though he were not sure what to do to fix that which had gone wrong. “Miyeon, you are not stepping hard enough when you walk. You are making Sojin have to slow herself down, and she is faltering. She is going to trip you.”

However, Miyeon’s eyes sharpen just a tad as she stares at him whilst he speaks like she has no clue what language he speaks in. “Are you sure?” She questions politely, not daring to so much as ponder raising her voice to him. “I mean - I apologize, Mr. Wu, I don’t mean to speak over you.”

“I think she was fine,” the model behind her states with a shrug of her shoulders, as contingent as always with her veteran expertise. “I have plenty of space back here, President Wu - she’s not in my way, and I’m doing just fine.” 

“Did I ask you what you had thought?” The president chides her coldly, his posture stoic and elegantly - but, perhaps a little bit awkwardly - stiff. “I did not hire you lot to make my judgments for me - must I expel you from this show, Miss Park? You have proven to be nothing but trustworthy to me thus far, and I would certainly expect you to continue that streak.”

Blinking rapidly, Sojin finds her breaths a little bit short and perhaps a little bit far and few between. “Sir, I apologize, please do not think that I am trying to step on your toes, it’s just - I know what it’s like to be critiqued like that, and so I have, over the years, picked up on some miniscule notions that I know you tend to look for - ”

“Did I ask you to help me?” Yifan shouts, then, so loudly that Sojin jumps right out of her skin and the crowd amassed around her falls into a deathly silence. “This is my job! You are my property, my dolls to dress up however the hell I please, and my pawns to sell the clothing that I produce to the eager public. You are not my specialized assistants, nor my trained overseers, for otherwise, I would have selected you for those duties myself!”

It’s not very often wherein the black-box theater finds itself blanketed in silence until it falls to those poor, sufferable souls to resort to cowardice and lose all train of thought in the face of adversity. Sojin’s lips curl into a taut, painful little line as she stands her frigid ground, knowing better than to talk back when the president is upset. What catches her eye, however, and causes her to lose the words which die out in is how truly enraged the president appears. He is fuming, smoke practically seeping right out of his ears and his complexion ruddied and reddened, and it’s been far too long a period of time since the president had last, to this extent, been riddled of his composure entirely. 

That being said, there remains but one single pair of astonished, unyielding eyes in the black-box theater, eyes which belong to perhaps the most unprovoked of souls. Wherein Sojin simmers down, the only other masculine presence in the vicinity suddenly pales in comparison. 

Kevin is staring at him in bewilderment, eyes wide and jaw lax, as though the man had just confessed to committing murder, as though he had come right out and stated his peculiar interest in the downfalls of the human body and the deterioration of the internal organs a little while after the poison has been ingested and begins its absorption. Although Yifan may be prickly and may feel rather rough around the edges, Kevin has never seen him lose his control this easily in front of a group of complete strangers - President Wu would rather drop dead than to let his guard down this way.

Chilled to the core, the photographer finds himself speechless as the president’s rigid body rolls through an awfully taut sigh as he expels what little tension he will willingly release, despite it causing him to remain as equally as frustrated as before. “Start over,” the president growls roughly, his inflection tipping increasingly downwards, as though deflating. Is he showing… defeat? 

“Pardon the intrusion,” spills out of his mouth before he can even think to stop himself, dozens of overwrought, exhausted eyes meeting his, including two rather fiery ones, and Kevin swallows around a cottony throat and coerces himself to continue crossing the line. There’s no turning back now. “I would like to take a brief fifteen-minute intermission to allow us all a chance to simmer back down. Girls, you may rehydrate, use the restrooms, make phone calls - for the next fifteen minutes, you are all free to go.”

Having been entrapped within the president’s wrath for over an hour now, it comes as no surprise as the girls deflate in unison with exhausted sighs and hushed expletives of frustration as they trickle down the stairs leading off of the stage, flooding the rows of seats to get as far as humanly possible away from the hurricane upon the stage. 

He beckons the president forward with his gaze as Yifan tosses a fiery glare his way, less than pleased that Kevin had overstepped his own word and had acted without permission. The threat is foundationless, trailing from eye to eye with an unsealed promise of misery that does not sway Kevin from where he stands. Yifan won’t do anything to shut him up - he can’t. 

What he does manage to convey, though, is a request for a private talk with a swift, sharp jerk of his irises to the side, motioning toward the double doors which lead out into the hallway by the elevators, a hall rarely used outside of the black-box training sessions. With the girls effectively far too intimidated to eavesdrop, and with the backstage studio still being relatively within earshot, it is the only place where Kevin could have a word with him and not spark the inferno of gossip.

Raising his jaw and solidifying his stance, Yifan blinks once, twice, and accepts.

“Spit it out.”

He’s being stubborn, crossing his arms over his front like a preschooler having been put in time-out, and the edge of impassivity in his gaze is dim and roughened. “I do not know what it is that you want me to say,” Yifan fronts, glancing to the side at the peppered granite walls beside the elevator, as though the flecks of stark white among the tans and warm beiges is, somehow, more intriguing than Kevin’s conversation.

However, given the past several weeks during which Yifan had played this relentless game of cat-and-mouse with him, had repeatedly channeled the not-me spirit and it upon him childishly, Kevin has had enough. This is enough. 

Nobody else would dare do such a thing, but Kevin knows that he, as Yifan’s only best friend, can overstep boundaries made illegal to others. He grabs the president by his collar - wrinkling his divine indigo suit, latticed with brilliant, glimmering crystals up the lapels, for he was scheduled for a meeting today with one of the head directors of the Hunan Conference to discuss the release which will be presented - and yanks him forward, startling him although his balance does not waver. Kevin is not quite as tall as he is, but he certainly can compensate for his linguality. “Listen here, you prick,” he growls, his lower lip curling into a taut little line, something it does when Kevin is truly furious, “I’ve sat back long enough and let you abuse and name-call your models for too ing long, and you know you aren’t normally that harsh with them,” he lays the threat on thick, giving him ample leverage to settle things down and drops his tone to a whisper as he hisses out, “so you either tell me just what the is going on with you, or I’m sending you home for the ing week until you straighten yourself out. I’ll do your job for you if you can’t.”

Yifan simply stares down at him with barely-bated shock lacing his irises, tinting the deep brown a muddy gray color, and lets a calm breath pass smoothly through his nostrils without fracturing their mutual gaze, the soft deflation the only sound among the silence. It’s his response to everything that has just been stated - Kevin knows it is. The ing nerve. 

He’s had enough of this child’s play and s his hand free from the president’s blouse. “What the is wrong with you? This is your ing empire, Yifan! This is your hard work in action, you selfish piece of , so why are you acting like you hate being here?”

He swears to God that if Yifan ignores him one more time, after winding him tightly with unrelenting, improper tension all week, he might just sock him. 

However, something in Yifan’s facade shifts - something that clicks, something that begins to formulate a response. “It’s none of your business,” is what finally seeps through abridged lips, something that really pisses Kevin off. 

“Bull, Yifan,” he retorts, debating crossing his own arms in a mockery of the president’s posture, in a spectacle towards how babyish he is acting. “I’m your best ing friend, you know, which automatically makes it my business.”

The Yifan who he knows like the back of his hands shifts his eyes away from his in a sharp roll, without a single differentiating crack in his countenance. “Did you interview and comb through the hundreds of applicants that I had to sift through?” Yifan questions him flatly, his expression remaining placid but emotionless. “Did you placate and rigorously train my girls, with each personal regimen specially tailored to each girl and each metabolism? Did you go out of your way to teach my girls how to right their flaws and how to get along with their team more effectively?”

He deadpans. “Yifan.”

“You didn’t, Shin,” the president replies in the same rigid tone, “which means you do not have the leverage to speak above me.”

“I can say whatever the I want,” Kevin frowns, then, the dark hairs in his brows curling downward. “You are not treating your employees like this, anymore, and you are going to tell me what is wrong with you, or so help me, I’ll stand here all goddamn afternoon if I have to, Wu, and you know that.”

It’s true. Yifan knows that Kevin can be just as stubborn as him. 

Finally, after weeks of not budging, it seems as though Kevin has finally splintered the baseboards of Yifan’s walls, for the president lets out a sigh, his eyes fluttering shut as