For the record, Nayeon is not a bad kid.

Nayeon is not supposed to be sitting in a conference room the day after new year's, twenty-three minutes before her actual appointment time. It's on what they call the older side of the company building, and the heater starting up again rumbles through her palms, sweaty and pressed flat against the plastic table. She wants to go home.

Nayeon is also not supposed to be on the front page of Dispatch, or trending number one on Naver, or caught in a damning series of photographs where she's got slotted against Brian's, his hands cupping a face that is very clearly hers.

In her defense, Nayeon doesn't usually break rules. Loves to follow them actually, and even the thought of skipping one class as a trainee made her heart rate spike out of fear. There was a kind of comfort in having the guidelines laid out for her – all she had to do was color within the lines and not make the sun purple instead of yellow. There'd never been the need for her to be called into an emergency meeting with a higher-up before. Case in point, Nayeon had to be a good kid.

And Nayeon, a good kid, is resolutely never drinking again.

The door opens, snapping her out of being half-asleep and half-lost in a daydream trying to predict the trajectory of her career now that the news is out. It's finally eight thirty, and Brian's holding the door for the management representative, right on time. He takes the seat beside hers. Nayeon looks away as soon as their eyes meet.

"So," the representative asks after a lengthy rundown of the situation that went in one of Nayeon's ears and straight out the other. “Are you two dating?”

"No," Nayeon says just as Brian says yes.

Brian frowns, forehead creasing. "Yes," Nayeon says just as Brian says no.

The representative sighs. She puts down her pen and leans back in her chair. "Look," she says. It looks like she just wants to go home, and Nayeon feels worse knowing that. "All I want to know is what you guys want the company statement to say."

"Oh," Brian replies in the absence of anything else. He glances at Nayeon, like he expects her to say something too. The clock keeps ticking.

Nayeon just had to go and color the goddamn sun purple once, didn't she.

The way it starts is this:

Nayeon doesn't have a particular ideal type. That, unfortunately, has no correlation to finding boys in rock bands ten times more attractive than she finds the average male, like every cliché teen rom-com has taught her to.

At the end of every year, the company throws a huge year-end celebration. It's the one acceptable time that they can all get spectacularly, off-their-asses drunk with some of the people they've known since middle school and not reprimanded for it (aside from the time two years ago when BamBam, attempting a backflip, broke a light at the restaurant. Nayeon wishes she’d been there to see it), which is fully taken advantage of by most.

The unofficial motto of JYP Nation according to Jackson goes a little like this: we’re a family. We train together. We cry together. We laugh together. We debut together. We get absolutely smashed together. End quote. Which is why Nayeon – who doesn't even like alcohol due to her “taste buds of an elementary schooler,” according to Jeongyeon – ends up drinking more than she’s used to and stepping outside for some air.

“You okay?” someone asks as her eyelids are starting to grow heavy. She snaps her head around too quickly and the entire universe tilts for a second. When it re-rights itself, Brian is standing beside where she’s sitting, looking at her.

“Yeah,” Nayeon tries lightly. Her tongue feels about five times heavier than it should. “I’m…” she searches for the appropriate word. “Peachy.”

Brian laughs at that. “Peachy,” he repeats, sounding amused, sitting down next to her on the bench. Nayeon’s always liked the way his smile lit up his entire face. “I guess that’s better than nauseous.”

If Nayeon set this scene in a warped, teen rom-com alternate universe, Sungjin would be her older brother, Jae and Wonpil Sungjin’s friends, and Dowoon one of their little brothers. And Brian, Brian would be that one friend of Sungjin’s that Nayeon’s always wanted the attention of, the one that Nayeon runs to open the door for, the one that Nayeon’s harbored a little crush on since she was fifteen.

The problem is, Nayeon’s way past her teenage years, gave up her first kiss to a web drama that didn’t even make it to air, and is convinced that the only reason she keeps fantasizing about love is because of some sort of hormonal imbalance that results when you don’t use your young adult days to experiment with it. Oh, and not to mention, they’re both idols.

She hiccups. “Waaaay better than nauseous,” she drawls before turning to look at Brian with a frown. “Do you think I’m drunk? Are you not drunk?”

“I don’t know,” Brian tells her, a lilt in his voice like he's about to tell a joke. He’s always liked to , anyone younger than him in general, but Nayeon’s never really minded when it came to him. “Do you think you’re drunk?”

Nayeon closes her eyes to stop the world from spinning. When she opens them, Brian’s face is closer to hers than she remembers it being. “You,” she starts, pointing a finger. There’s something in his eyes, even darker in the night, that Nayeon can’t make out. She squints. “You look like you want to kiss me.”

He’s not smiling anymore. A moment of silence, them staring at each other, passes. Nayeon's suddenly afraid that he'll move away.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Brian finally asks, quiet, more to than to her. When the fog from his breath dissipates, Nayeon realizes she’s staring her fantasy right in the face. It makes her feel startlingly sober.

Nayeon answers by leaning forward and pressing her lips against his, soft. And then all at once, Brian’s hands are gentle and warm on the sides of her face and he’s moving his mouth against hers in a way that reminds Nayeon that oh, that's right, he’s dated before, and it’s so much better than Nayeon’s first kiss on that drama set. Outside is cold where they are, in the dead of winter, but Brian’s breath is hot against and her heart’s pounding faster than it had after her first few drinks when she became old enough for alcohol, and she draws herself even closer to him until she can feel the heat radiating off his shoulders through her coat. Nayeon never wants him to stop.

And, well, that's kind of the way that ends.

Here's the thing:

If they say YES – It's more or less a lie, but things make sense. People usually kiss when they're in a relationship, and idols are, underneath all those layers of foundation, in fact people, so it's natural for them to be in love with someone else. The universe doesn't explode, Brian and Nayeon don't get hate comments other than from fans who are blinded by their rose-tinted glasses of love. This is the safe answer.

If they say NO – It's more or less the truth, but things go bad. At this point, there's no way to pretend that isn't them in the picture, no matter how shameless their company's statement can get. Idols have time to mess around? They're not working hard enough. Nayeon isn't all that innocent and Brian writes sad lyrics because she broke his heart. She gets burned at the stake.

Maybe guidelines aren't always so great after all.

Nayeon’s just entered “what do people do when they date” into the search engine when Jeongyeon jumps onto her bed.

“Oh my god,” she says, waving her phone screen in Nayeon’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Nayeon’s starting to lose feeling in her legs from where Jeongyeon's crushing her. She swats the phone out of her face until it’s a respectable distance away, and then grabs Jeongyeon’s wrist to steady it enough to read it. CONFIRMED: Twice Nayeon and Day6 Young K are in a relationship, JYP says, stares her back in the face. The company works faster than she thought.

“Why do I need to tell you when you can just read the news?” Nayeon jokes, sticking her tongue out. Jeongyeon just sits on her in retaliation. “And it’s not like – ”

Nayeon stops herself.

“So,” Brian had said once the representative had finished scribbling whatever she needed into her notepad and walked out of the room. He readjusted his snapback, combing back his unstyled hair with a hand. In the brief moment without the hat shadowing his face, Nayeon realized the true extent of his dark circles. “I guess this means we’re dating now.”

Nayeon twisted her hands. “It’s not like we have to actually, you know,” she looked over at him. He raised an eyebrow, arms crossed against his chest. Nayeon swallowed. “Go on dates or anything. They can just,” she squeezed her hands together so hard it almost hurt. Brian kept looking at her. “Make the statement and we can, uh, move on with our regular lives?”

“Are you prepared for the questions you’re probably going to get the next time you have an interview?” Brian sighed, shaking his head. “Or the possible backlash? Or what you’re going to say to your members?” He rubbed at his jaw with the heel of his hand. “God, what am I going to say to my members?”

Nayeon hadn’t really thought that far. She’d expected to just tell them the truth – they’d understand, Brian was pretty high up on everyone’s if you had to date someone within the company list. But what if one of them said something that exposed their lie on broadcast? What if she said something? Nayeon was notoriously bad at keeping her own secrets, after all.

“What are you doing?” Brian had said, watching as Nayeon sunk further and further down into her chair until she was almost completely under the table.

“Trying to escape reality,” she muttered. He actually laughed at that, and even harder when she fell off her chair completely, and helped her stand back up. It made her feel slightly better knowing that she could still make him smile, but, at the same time, worse knowing that she had bigger things to worry about. Two steps forward, three steps back.

Jeongyeon goes for her stomach. “And it’s not like?” she repeats, waiting out Nayeon’s giggle fit for her reply.

“I was saying,” Nayeon heaves. “It’s not like anything’s really different?” There’s an uncertainty in her own voice that she hears. Clears . “I mean, we were friends before. We’re just...closer friends now.”

Jeongyeon wiggles her eyebrows at her. “Closer friends who do not-so-friendly things,” she grins, making a kissy face. Nayeon kicks her in the .

“You wish,” Nayeon snorts, rolling her eyes. She throws a plushie in Jeongyeon’s face. “Get out!”

“Hey, I live here too!” Jeongyeon insists. Nayeon chucks a Pikachu at her this time. “Fine, fine, fine!” she says, getting up off the bed. “I’ll leave you alone so you can call your boyfriend.”

Nayeon collapses back into her bed once the door’s closed, covers her face with her hands, and groans.

So how’d it go?

Two hours later, in the middle of eating a cup ramen, she gets a reply: How’d what go?

Talking to your members ㅎㅎㅎ She puts her phone back on the table face down, promising herself that she won’t check again until she’s finished eating. She burns her tongue slurping up the next chopstick-full of noodles.

It’s not until Nayeon’s finished folding her laundry and throwing Sana, Jihyo, and Mina’s on