to be read with this song: 

Joshua didn’t expect it to be any more than a meeting for his, in a way, atonement of sin. He’d broken her arm, and now she’s taking on a heavily strenuous job. And Jisoo is hovering between the lines of a shunned outcast and an idol that used to be. He should be sorry. He is sorry. The remorse had plagued him for weeks.

So when he had finally met her, finally done something about it, his heart should have been at peace.

Should have.

He wonders what he’s doing now, what’s wrong with him, as he stares at and scrolls through his phone with a dopey smile on his face.

CONTACT: JISOO NO.2                                                                     ONLINE

im composing now~ wyd??

its been 2 wks bruh i forgive u

y do u keep texting me

…

still. wyd?

y must u do dis 2 me

ur a shiny new idol u shouldn’t keep talking to me im trash

no im a shining diamond

no you aren’t

I like talking to u

it’s 6am y r u awake even

told u im composing

thinking about life? People?

lol what r ur lyrics abt

Hope? I mostly arrange haha. just came up with a new guitar melody.

wanna hear?

okay

[Audio File: Sent!]

it’s actually pretty good

really? i think it’s kind of bland on its own though. not long enough for a legit song.

you’re talented, jisoo

hah this feels weird

 “jisoo”

guess the joke never gets old, huh.

“Hello jisoo”

“You look good today, jisoo.”

 “how u doin jisoo”

“I’m fine, jisoo”

“I really like you, jisoo”

Jisoo doesn’t respond for awhile. He panics a little. And then a lot. He doesn’t know why he had sent that, why he had typed that, why he had thought of that in the first place. Where did even that come from?

He scrambles for the keyboard function and types in a reply to save his sorry .

as in

this is me complimenting myself

ya know

uh-huh

it’s a joke, jisoo

haha

He doesn’t know what to type after that. Their conversation doesn’t go any further. It’s 6am, and although tomorrow’s a late schedule day, he should really sleep.

But as Joshua rests against the headboard, his back sinking into the mattress and his eyes shut but with his mind running wild, he knows he cannot. The moon is in its dying phases of its allotted screen time in the night sky, and Joshua is so, impossibly awake.

Nowadays, he’s lost count of those nights, filled with thinking about the unfairness of things, of make-believe sequences and conversations he wishes would take place.

Nowadays, when he strums on his guitar, when he runs his fingers over strings and traces his pen over paper, he’s stopped stopping himself in his track. He’s stopped taking steps back and wondering how he’s become like this. He’s stopped trying to question why he’s always thinking of one person in particular.

He wonders if she’s okay sometimes. If she ever hurts her arm while carrying bags of fried pork and soup containers. If she’s safe on the road; if she’s cold at night when the rain falls. Did she bring a raincoat? Is she speeding? Does she ever sleep enough?

Joshua wonders a lot about Jisoo.

Sometimes too much.

After two months of toiling from midnight to the crack of dawn, after two glorious paychecks and after crawling through life with approximately 3 hours of sleep everyday, Seo Jisoo crashes.

It happens in the middle of one of those rare joint group practices – those that she would dance with the rest of Lovelyz and those that would make her heart swell because they’re still preparing for her return, still remembering her place in those formations, and her place in the group.

As they do the choreography for Hi~, Jisoo’s vision blurs. She’s usually a good dancer, but her steps go out of line, and her hands move with significant lag as compared to the rest of the members.

She shakes her head to force herself back into concentration, but it hardly helps. I can’t screw this up, what if I’m not worthy of re-debuting?

Somewhere when the beat drops for the last chorus of the bridge, the world is spinning. Before Jisoo can register the pain from her extremely ungraceful fall, there’s a thud and then everything is black.

Mijoo is the first one that rushes over to her. Jiae is the first one to scream.

They kneel over Jisoo’s body, a tangled mess of sweaty limbs with worry. Yein suggests a prayer circle.

Meanwhile, Soojung races out of the practice room to find their manager. It’s a panic fest, along with a bonus Jiyeon slamming on mirrors and scolding herself for allowing her unnie to go through this nightmare of a job.

Jisoo only wakes up two days later.

Her head and body aches with pain and disuse, and it hits her that she’s so, so tired. It takes eons of strength to just open her eyes. The first person she sees is, not Jiyeon, not Sunggyu, and not even her manager.  There’s a sleeping boy on the chair near the curtain, his hand half-wrapped around his phone, his snapback low on his face. It’s at night, and the lighting is hardly great.

What. What even happened. Wasn’t I fine like, yesterday?

She turns over in the hospital bed and struggles to get up. Jisoo is stuck in a shared ward with mint-green curtains draped from the sides and some random guy sitting down that her blurry, wax-crusted eyes cannot make out as of yet.

Jisoo fumbles around on the small table next to her for her phone. It’s a developed natural instinct that homosapiens have embraced into the 21st century, anyway.

She doesn’t remember yesterday’s date, but the first thing that catches her attention is that it’s 2:40 am. The second thing is that she has 168 new messages and 124 missed calls, but it barely screams attention when it hits her that she’s late for work. Jisoo jolts upright in bed, scrambling to strip the covers and climb out of the too-high bed.

“I have to work, what the , I’m so late-”

The random guy stirs awake and jumps out of his seat as if James Bond had pressed the eject button.

“YOU’RE AWAKE!”

It’s Joshua. Some unseen nurse from the other end of the ward hisses “SHHH” really loudly.

 “Jisoo, you’re awake!” He says again, this time, more subdued. Jisoo’s eyes grows as wide as saucers.

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? I’m late, please help me find my sneakers!” Jisoo whispers urgently as she tries to get out of the bed and untangle herself from the IV drip.

Joshua runs towards her and grabs her shoulders to stop herself from flailing around. “What are you doing? You literally just woke up after fainting for two days, and you want to go to work? Work?”

He fixes the IV drip’s position back in place, and manages to carry Jisoo back to the cramped bed as she kicks around in protest.  “Do you know how worried everyone’s been? Your members are walking zombies and you want to work? You have to rest!”

“I fainted?”

“During dance practice, apparently. And you didn’t wake up for two goddamn days. I- Everyone was panicking,” Joshua says as he drapes the covers back up her body and then thumbs her fringe out her eyes. It’s horribly intimate, and Jisoo shouldn’t allow him to do this. She wriggles in the blanket.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” He drags the chair to sit beside her bed. “You’re not Superman, you know.”

Joshua gets up again to get water for her, and Jisoo breaks the silence.

“So why did I faint? What did the report say?”

Joshua hands her the water, and she laps at the water greedily. has possibly the parched-ness level of the Saharan Desert.

“Prolonged exhaustion is the biggest cause of your body shutting down,” he explains, “but the reason why you didn’t wake up for that long, unlike normal cases of fainting from exhaustion, is because when you fell down, you hit the back of your head and had a minor concussion.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t you dare “wow” me. It could have been so much more serious! Don’t play around with head injuries, it’s not a joke!” Joshua exclaims and grabs her hand sternly.

“How did you get in here anyway?”

Joshua’s eyes shift uneasily. “It’s a long story…”

Jisoo struggles, but manages to sit up in bed. “And it’s past 2 am, aren’t standard visiting hours over?”

“SHHH stop stop Jisoo, I swear I’ll tell you later-”

“And what if your members, your company knows that you’re here? And oh my god, what if Dispatch-”

In a state of panic, Joshua covers with a palm as he looks around in alarm. Jisoo protests with muffled cries of “mmmuoRFmmmm!!” When Joshua doesn’t stop cupping , she resorts to desperate measures.

“OH my god, did you just? ? My? Hand?” Joshua exclaims in disgust and shock.

Jisoo sticks out her tongue. “You wouldn’t let go!”

“You wouldn’t stop asking questions!”

Joshua slumps his shoulders in defeat.

“If were to tell anyone my modus operandi for sneaking into this ward and convincing them to let me stay after hours, it would sound – I mean it is – highly unorthodox.”

Jisoo narrows her eyes but thankfully, doesn’t press further. “Okay, just one question then. How did you even know I was injured in the first place?”

“Kim Jiyeon,” Jisoo shurgs his shoulders nonchalantly.

“You guys know each other?”

“There’s a groupchat for idols in 95 line. I have my connections, you know,” he smirks.

“But does the rest of Seventeen know about you being here?”

“Yes and no. Minghao – you know, that Chinese guy who wanted my dumplings, and our leader Seungcheol, they know about it.”

Jisoo’s bed is on the far end of a shared basic ward, and she takes advantage of that as she sits staring at the moon and stars that peek outside her window.

Softly, almost inaudibly, she whispers into the clinical hospital air. “Do you think they’re angry at me?”

His hands find his way to hers as he frowns worriedly. “Stop thinking like that. They’re not angry, I’m not angry. And I know what you’re thinking, Jisoo,” he says and looks her right in the eyes. “You’re not a burden.”

She should really stop him from grabbing her hands at random moments. Her heart fills with something warm and familiar and she falls back into the pillows, eyes shut, and erratic heartbeat slowing down.

Jisoo doesn’t know what obliged Joshua to come, but it’s… it’s good that it happened.  No matter how unethical the method of infiltration. But at least, in the semi-darkness, she’s not thinking about how much money she’ll need for the bill, how much worry and disarray she’s caused- no. In this darkness, the thoughts clear