Yiyang turns around and is met with a smile that curves eyes into perfect crescents, a smile that somehow manages to be dazzling even with a mask covering the lower half of her face. She almost has an urge to bow and say ‘shijie,’ an engrained habit, but then again, Xuanyi isn’t really her shijie, right? They aren’t in sister groups, after all. She isn’t in any group at all.

“So.” Xiening grins. “I’m the only one who gets to sleep in your bed?”

“I didn’t make it at SM and I didn’t make it in Produce Camp either.” Yiyang swallows and casts her eyes down. “It just…it feels like I failed, you know?”

“Liu Xiening…” Yiyang’s voice is cool, her impression inscrutable. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” “I-I can explain!” Xiening’s voice cracks, of course, in a decidedly panicked way. “It wasn’t what it looked like!”

Xiening murmurs something that Yiyang doesn’t quite catch, but it sounds like her name again, and then “missed you,” her voice cracking in a different way from the usual.

I look at her and think about how I won’t be able to look at her like this from now on, and my heart swells and dips. I don’t know what hurts more: not being able to debut, or having to be apart from her.

“Hey, Liu Xiening, I have a few bones to pick with you.” Xiening feels sweat bead at her temple. “Uh, what?” “How could you kiss Yifan and cling onto Yijin like that?” Yiyang says with a cute scowl.

“Do you think Xiening is…different?” Yijin catches herself asking Zhao Yue one day.

Xiening had told herself that she would confess after the finale, whether they made it into the group or not. She only considered those two outcomes: they both made it, or they both didn’t.

One would think, looking at them, that Xiening is the one who didn’t make the lineup.