The track ended. All that could be heard was heavy breathing while the four girls held their poses. Their bodies heaved up and down, the heat from being on the stage finally hitting them as their adrenaline dropped.

It was just their dress rehearsal, but already the girls were exhausted. It was more than just a special stage – at least to Dahyun. This was her chance to finally shake off the cute image everyone had of her. Especially compared to her special stage of Kissing You she performed in pigtails and a lollipop, the pressure was on.

Her body was trembling most of all out of the four girls. Momo noticed her chest swelling more and more with each intake of breath. She couldn’t help herself. After months and months of practice, telling herself over and over again that she could do it, she was finally breaking down. Momo knew this would happen, she had the most pressure on her, and it had been building up for so long that it was only about time.

It all started over a year ago, when she performed her exaggerated version of Taemin’s Move at a fanmeeting. It was a hit among the fans, they gushed over the fancam of her cover for weeks afterwards, but not for the reasons she had wanted. Not when she was asked by her members to perform a serious cover – in stark contrast to everything she was known for doing.

Dahyun would be front and center for a majority of the song, PD-nim telling her she would finally be getting the screen time she deserved after their many comebacks where she suffered in terms of line distribution. For a brief moment at the beginning Momo was happy for her… but then she thought about the thousand-yard stares from the audience that would be on the poor girl, piercing her skin with their gazes. The cameras that would be following her, collecting evidence of her inadequacies and putting them out onto the internet where she would be forever subjected to the complaints of netizens telling her to stick to her lane of comedy.

Not that she hated it when fans praised her for the laughs she provided and her witty humor on variety shows, but time and time again she would always ask to be seen for more than that. More than her over-the-top comedy, more than her self-deprecating humor… she was more than that.

And Momo was determined to prove it. The world would finally get to see that Dahyun was more than what they knew. They would finally see the Dahyun that she knew.

While her members were all busy touching up their makeup and giving their last mic checks, Dahyun left by herself, pacing back and forth across the room – breaking down.

She couldn’t do it. As she stared herself in the mirror, as she recited her lines over and over, as she continued to focus on the intricacies of the moves she was making, she decided that she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be y.

She wasn’t like Momo, who had the confidence to post her intense dance covers on their Instagram page or show off in front of the variety show cameras. She was never praised for her dancing enough to get a nickname for it, never complimented on her body or her

She wasn’t like Mina, the elegant black swan who only came second to Momo in terms of dancing. But if there was one thing for sure that woman was so intricate with her moves, never making a mistake, always exuding emotions akin to the piece she danced to.

She wasn’t even like Chaeyoung, the acclaimed baby of their girl group who could now apparently be ier than she ever could. With her new lady-killing blonde hair and her past performances of Greedy, Chaeyoung at least had the repertoire to back her up.

She was just the comic relief. She was the one they called up to be her awkward self. She sure knew how to stir up a crowd, whether it was through jokes or self-deprecation, but it was certainly never in the way she needed to right now.

Whenever they had asked her to be y before she would always play it off in some comedic fashion. Like on K-Rush when she made all her unnies laugh by taking off her jacket. Or when she had to dance to ‘Havana’ on Idol Room and took it way over the top. She was good at that, she never doubted herself in those aspects, but y dancing? For real? In front of a live audience? Dahyun couldn’t imagine a worse situation.

But just as she surrendered all hope, head hanging in her arms, seated in the corner of the room defeated, that’s when she was picked right back up, her arms opened, taking in a warm hug from the kind stranger who warmly approached her. She could tell from the woman’s figure and physique that it was Momo. They hugged a lot in the past three years.

And with each hug, came the tears.

 “I can’t do it,” Dahyun broke first, digging herself into her unnie’s neck.

"I heard you said the same thing before you went on that rollercoaster the other day."

"This is different..."

Momo sighed, her back with slow gentle . “Do you think I would have spent all those hours in the practice room with you if I didn’t think you could?”

“Well what if they don’t think I can?”

Momo could feel the small girl trembling in her arms.

“Then you’ll just have to prove them all wrong.”

Dahyun stilled for a while, comforted by her words, until her thoughts began to run wild again.

“But it’ll be so hard… It’s all going online… People will keep watching and watching and watching…”

Dahyun shook her head with each of her worries, digging herself deeper and deeper into their embrace. She lost strength in herself as she did so, slipping off her feet. But even as she fell Momo took the chance to catch her, grab her, hold her tighter and tighter promising to never let her go. She held the girl’s head against her chest, squeezing to the one she called hers.

“Then they’ll finally see you like I see you. As the y goddess that you are.”

Dahyun couldn’t help but laugh, a smile breaking through her pale cheeks.

“And if they stop liking me after this? After I ruin the image they all have of me?”

Momo pulled her away to look into her eyes. And without hesitation, she reassured her.

“Then I’ll just have to love you in place of all of them.”

It was in that loving moment shared between them that Dahyun found a new spark within her.

She was Kim Dahyun. Someone who will always be loved and confident in being herself.

And now she'll also be known as the girl who no one expected to dance a y dance cover – and killed it.

"You help me be confident"