Hyoyeon and Yuri make dinner, and it’s as good as usual, but Taeyeon doesn’t have an appetite. She takes a bowl to appease them, but all she does is push around the food with her chopsticks.

“If you aren’t going to eat that, you might as well throw it out,” Hyoyeon says. “It won’t go away if you keep doing that, you know.”

Taeyeon gives her a slightly guilty look. “It’s not that it isn’t good. I’m just not hungry.”

“I know.” Hyoyeon pushes a glass of water towards her. “Here, drink that. You haven’t drunk anything all day.”

“I could go for something stronger than water,” Taeyeon says, only half-jokingly. She’s not thirsty, but she takes a sip anyway. Maybe it would make them stop looking at her like that, their eyes full of concern, like she’s the one who’s hurt instead of Jessica, whose missing seat looks unbearably conspicuous. “I think I’ll head to bed early,” she says, standing up and pushing back her chair. “Thanks for dinner. You can leave the dishes; I’ll do them tomorrow.”

“Unnie,” Yoona speaks up. “Are you sure you’ll be able to fall sleep?”

Taeyeon very much doubts it, but she isn’t going to tell them that. “I’m tired,” she says evasively, which is true enough. “There’s no point in me being here and bringing all your moods down, is there?”

“We all know you’re just going to lie on your bed and think more about it,” Tiffany says. She’s barely touched her food as well, although she’s made more progress than Taeyeon. “Why don’t you just—talk to us?” Her eyes are pained, and her bottom lip is bitten almost raw.

“I don’t think there’s anything to say—”

“You always say that.” Tiffany’s chopsticks clatter loudly against her bowl when she sets them down; one slips and falls onto the ground. Taeyeon starts to reach for it, but Tiffany catches her wrist, stopping her. “You never want to talk.”

Taeyeon speaks carelessly, rashly, without thinking. “Well, maybe you should take the hint then.”

Tiffany’s face turns white, and Taeyeon belatedly realizes what she said. She pales too, and not for the first time, wishes that there’s such a thing as a time machine.

“Fany,” she starts, tongue weighed down by guilt, mouth bitter with regret.

“You’re right,” Tiffany says quietly. “Maybe I should take the hint.” She picks up the fallen chopstick from the floor, sets it on the table, and walks away expressionlessly.

Taeyeon can feel six pairs of eyes on her; she feels the silence prick at her ears, wrap around her, threaten to choke her, and she leaves before it utterly engulfs her.

In the bathroom, with the door closed and locked, she clutches the sink with a white-knuckled grip and stares into the mirror. Only one pair of eyes looks back at her, slightly wide and even darker than usual, but she can still feel the weight of all their stares.

Tiffany hadn’t looked back at her at all, not even once, and Taeyeon wonders what she would have seen in Tiffany’s eyes.

Taeyeon doesn’t feel like answering her phone, but when she sees the caller ID, she finds herself incapable of not picking up.

“Hello?” Her voice comes out flat and listless.

Her caller’s voice is flat too, and just a bit drier than usual. “I’ll just cut straight to the point here.”

“No ‘hi, how are you’?”

“Hi, how are you,” Jessica says. “I heard you screwed up.”

“Yeah.” Taeyeon gives a mirthless chuckle. “I’m good at that.”

“Taeyeon.” Jessica’s voice is gentler now. “It’s not the end of the world, you know. It’s Tiffany, she’ll forgive you.”

Taeyeon knows that, she knows that Tiffany would forgive her without incident if she just apologizes, that even if she doesn’t, Tiffany will probably approach her anyway and they would work it out. Tiffany is great at holding on, in many aspects, but she doesn’t hold on to grudges, to resentment.

She’s not like Taeyeon, in that aspect.

“I’m sorry,” Taeyeon says quietly.

“That’s nice, now go say it to Fany.”

“No, I mean—”

“Taeyeon.” Something about the way Jessica says her name makes Taeyeon fall silent. “Do you remember what I said earlier?”

“When is ‘earlier’?”

“I told you not to make me worry.” Jessica clucks her tongue. “And you’re doing a terrible job at it, I have to say.”

Taeyeon swallows, thick with guilt as the image of Jessica, pale and small in that hospital bed, returns to her. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, her voice dropping, almost fading away. “I shouldn’t have – you should be resting, not worrying about me.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.”

“You shouldn’t be worrying about me. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“Why not?” Jessica asks offhandedly.

“I just—don’t.” Taeyeon pauses, wets her lips. “I’m not worth worrying about.”

“Taeyeon.” There’s a note of something close to anger in Jessica’s voice now. “Don’t even go there.”

“Go where?”

“If you’re not worth worrying about, what do you think you’re worth, exactly?”

I’m not worth what you think I am. I’m not worth you guys; I don’t deserve you, I never have.

Taeyeon tries to steer the conversation down a lighter path. “I don’t know, how much did our last tour make?”

“Kim Taeyeon, you’re worth a hell of a lot, okay?” Jessica says. “A hell of a lot.” Her voice softens, although it’s still firm and unyielding. “Don’t doubt that.”

“Jessica—”

“Don’t doubt that,” Jessica repeats. “Believe me.”

Taeyeon bites her lip and releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Rationally, she knows that the two phrases almost mean the same thing, but somehow, the way Jessica says the latter makes it sound heavier, more significant, a weight that is comforting instead of burdening.

“I believe you,” she says softly.

Jessica exhales too. “Good. Don’t let me catch you saying something stupid like that again. If I have to beat some sense into you, I will.”

Taeyeon smiles. “Is that a threat?”

“No, it’s a promise.”

The word ‘promise’ reminds her of another promise she made, of intertwined pinkies and mirrored smiles, and the memory makes her smile widen briefly before it slips away.

“Jessica—” she starts, just as Jessica says “Taeyeon” at the exact same time. Taeyeon clears . “You first.”

“You’re going to talk to Tiffany, right?” Jessica asks, rather brusquely.

“Yeah,” Taeyeon sighs. “I think a talk between us has been a long time coming.”

“You’re going to tell her, then?”

“I don’t want to,” Taeyeon admits. “I don’t ever want to tell her.”

“I think—she already knows,” Jessica says delicately. “It wasn’t that hard to see.”

“I guess I was always worse at hiding my feelings than I thought.”

Jessica’s silent for a long moment. “It’s not such a gift,” she says quietly, “being able to hide how you feel.”

“What do you mean?”

Jessica doesn’t reply, doesn’t make a single sound. The silence stretches on for so long that Taeyeon almost thinks Jessica hung up on her.

Finally, Jessica speaks. “I mean, we all have masks. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah.” Sometimes Taeyeon feels like she’s just the result of one mask pasted over another, and she think that if you wear a mask long enough, eventually your face become that mask. Eventually it’ll swallow you. “I think so.”

“That’s why we have each other,” Jessica says. “We can see through each other’s masks and we remind each other that we’re wearing them, so we don’t become them.”

Taeyeon thinks that’s an excellent way to put it, but. “I can’t see through your mask.”

“Can’t you?” Jessica murmurs. “I don’t think I’m that good of an actress.”

“Well, you are,” Taeyeon says with frustration. “You’re so hard to read.”

“I’m glad.” There’s a hint of a smile in Jessica’s voice, along with something else, something heavier and sadder. “It wouldn’t be fun if you knew everything about me.”

“But I want to,” Taeyeon says, her voice tinged with frustration. “I’m tired of not being able to get you.”

“It’s kind of funny how you’re saying that,” Jessica says flippantly, “given how little you let us in. It’s not fun to be on the other side of the door, is it?”

Taeyeon opens to give a retort, but she realizes that she doesn’t have one. Jessica’s right. She shouldn’t be complaining about someone being hard to understand; it would be the epitome of the pot calling the kettle black.

“I didn’t realize the door was bolted shut. I always thought that it was open a crack.”

“Maybe a really tiny crack that’s hard to see through.”

Taeyeon finds herself smiling without volition again. Jessica’s good at doing that to her. “I guess we should both work on our eyesight then.”

“I guess so.”

Taeyeon hears voices talking in the background, a woman calling Jessica by her Korean name, and then Jessica’s voice, muffled, as if she’s set the phone down.

“Taengoo,” Jessica says, and Taeyeon realizes that it’s the first time Jessica called her that this whole conversation. “I have to go. My mom is—being a mom. She made me some nasty health soup thing that she wants me to drink.”

“Well, make sure you drink it all.”

“She almost put cucumbers in it.” Jessica sounds so appalled that Taeyeon has to laugh.

“I’m sorry cucumbers exist.”

“So am I,” Jessica sighs. “Well, that’s the way the world is. See you later, Taengoo.”

“Bye, Sica.” Taeyeon ends the call, holding her phone for a moment longer. She puts it down and looks at her closed bedroom door. She can almost see the short steps it would take her past it, down the hallway and to a room that she can’t avoid for much longer.

She stands up and puts her hand on the doorknob. It’s time she stopped running away. This time she would walk into the storm rather than trying to hide from it.

“Tiffany?” Taeyeon raps her knuckles purposefully on Tiffany’s bedroom door. “Miyoung. Please let me in. I need to talk to you.”

Tiffany doesn’t take long to open the door. She looks at Taeyeon with those dark, deep eyes of hers, eyes that seem to get darker and deeper the longer you look into them, and yet you couldn’t look away.

“You never call me Miyoung anymore,” she notes offhandedly.

“Does it bother you when I call you that?”

“No, it doesn’t bother me.”

Tiffany opens the door a little wider, a silent invitation. Taeyeon steps into her room, which she’s been in as many times as she’s been in her own, and yet suddenly it feels a bit like a foreign territory. Tiffany shuts the door behind them.

“Taeyeon, I need to tell you something. Please just sit and listen for a bit, okay?”

“Okay,” Taeyeon says slowly. She starts towards the chair, but Tiffany takes a seat on the bed and pats the spot beside her, and Taeyeon joins her without another word.

“First of all, you don’t have to apologize,” Tiffany says in a calm, quiet, utterly unlike her voice. “You were right. I don’t—know how to take hints well enough.”

“Tiffany,” Taeyeon protests. “I didn’t—”

“You said you would be quiet and listen to me,” Tiffany reminds her, and she falls silent. She’s always been bad at denying Tiffany things. “I know I don’t listen to people, and especially to you, as much I should. I’m too loud, aren’t I? I drown out the voices of people around me.”

Taeyeon can’t keep quiet. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

“Like what?”

“You’re loud, but you’re not ignorant. You talk more than me, but I know you hear me just fine, I know you listen to me.”

“And you know,” Tiffany says suddenly, “that I love you, right?”

“Yes,” Taeyeon says slowly. “I know that.”

“Sometimes I felt like you didn’t,” Tiffany says, her eyes on her lap. “Sometimes I wanted to tell you that, tell you those exact words, but I-I thought it would have hurt you.”

“Because I was in love with you?” The words are startlingly easy to say. She’s kept them locked up for so long inside her that she thought they would tear something on their way out, but she feels okay. She feels okay.

“Yes,” Tiffany replies, and there it is, it’s all out now. Tiffany knows. Tiffany knew. For how long, Taeyeon doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to know. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Taeyeon’s voice is thick, and it refuses to cooperate with her when she tries to calm it. She’s always prided herself on her vocal control, but of course at a time like this it’s like she doesn’t have any at all. “You can’t help how you feel.”

Tiffany lifts her eyes and looks at Taeyeon. “But you’re not in love with me anymore.”

“No, I’m not.”

Tiffany exhales, less than a sigh, more than a breath. It stirs the air between them, which feels lighter, clearer.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Taeyeon asks.

She had been in love with Tiffany for years; long, painful and yet beautiful years, filled with yearning, with hurt, with the desperate desire to shed feelings that clung to her and refused to relinquish her. And for Tiffany, those years must have been filled with pity, probably guilt. Yet Tiffany never talked to her about them, not until now, that Taeyeon’s let go of those feelings at last. (Or rather, that they’ve let go of her.)

Tiffany’s voice is even. “I want you to be happy.”

Taeyeon’s chuckle leaves a bitter taste in . “Yeah, that’s what everyone has been telling me.”

“It’s not easy to be happy, is it?” There’s a note in Tiffany’s voice that tells Taeyeon she’s speaking very much from experience.

“Jooyoung oppa told me that it’s easier to be sad than it is to be happy.” She searches Tiffany’s expression. “Are you sad?”

“No, I don’t think I’m sad.” Tiffany’s expression is hard to describe; Taeyeon settles on lost, although she doesn’t think it’s a great fit. “I don’t think I’m very happy either.”

“What’s wrong?”

Tiffany shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t even think anything is wrong, but I-I have this feeling.”

“You’re confusing me,” Taeyeon admits.

“I’m confusing myself too.” Tiffany runs a hand through her hair and gives a smile that’s a shadow of her usual ones. “If I figure out the problem, I’ll tell you about it, okay?”

“Yes, do that.” Taeyeon thinks that she really doesn’t have any right to tell Tiffany to talk to her, to tell anyone to talk to her, but then again, she’s Tiffany’s best friend and maybe that gives her the right. “Tiffany. I’m sorry.”

“I just want you to open up sometimes,” Tiffany says quietly. “You have so much going on in your head all the time. I wish that we could, that I could, help you with some of it, that’s all.”

“I do open up to you. I open up to you and Sunkyu the most out of anyone.”

“And Jessi.”

“And Jessica.”

“Taeyeon,” Tiffany says softly. “I just want you to be happy.”

The guilt has been lifted from her, only to be replaced by Tiffany’s concern, which is no lighter, no easier to bear.

“I know that. I’m trying, Fany. I’m trying.”

Tiffany’s smile is faint and tired, but real. “That’s all I can ask of you then.”

“I thought you said ‘there is do or do not, there is no try’.”

“Sometimes, trying is all we can do.” Tiffany shrugs. “And sometimes, it’s not that we don’t try hard enough, it’s that we’re not trying in the right direction.”

“Do you think I’m trying in the right direction?”

“I don’t know, TaeTae. Do you think you are?”

“The only direction I know is towards you guys,” Taeyeon says honestly, “but you want me to show you the way. I don’t know the way, Fany, I’ve never known.”

“But you’ve led us down the right path anyway.”

“I don’t think I’ve led you anywhere. I think—”

“I think you ask of yourself more than we ask of you, Taeyeon,” Tiffany says gently. “You’re our leader, maybe you think it’s just a label, and maybe some days that’s all it is. Maybe you think it’s a burden, and I’m sorry if you think that, I’m sorry if you’re weighed down by it. But – you’re our leader, and you’ve done more than you realize, you’ve done so much for us. You haven’t let us down, okay?”

Taeyeon swallows and manages to nod somehow. “Okay.”

“Remember that,” Tiffany says, still gentle but firm. “Please.”

“I-I will,” Taeyeon says, and she wonders if this is what faith is, the belief in something that you can’t fully grasp, the hold that something intangible has on you. “I’ll remember.”

It’s easier to be sad than it is to be happy. It’s easier to be afraid than it is to be brave. And it’s easier to forget than it is to remember.

But Jooyoung was right, Taeyeon’s never taken the easy way out, and she won’t start now.