The weirdest part about training so long, Brian thought, was that you saw everyone around you change. Girls grew up and learned how to perfect their makeup, and boys shot up several centimeters and started speaking with deeper voices, but every time Brian met his own gaze in the mirror, all he saw was himself, stagnant. Maybe it was because this happened everyday, multiple times a day, and when you saw yourself so often, it was hard to point out what exactly was changing and how. He was never particularly looking for anything when he saw his reflection, either.

The idea of being stuck in the same place didn't really bother him unless he really thought about it, and he was good at not scrutinizing over the little things. It never really struck him until he saw the people around him actually moving, whether that meant debuting, in Jaebum's case, or leaving, like Don did for medical school. And even when he did get a glimpse of anything other than stagnation, he blinked and it became a memory - just that: a glimpse, but nothing more through singing and dancing and rapping and learning a new instrument because their creative direction changed and sleeping instead of showering some nights, promising himself he'd do so in the morning, and forgetting then, too.

And just like that, five years passed.










Brian's heard somewhere that the songs of your middle school years are the songs that stick with you forever, close to your heart, whether you liked them or not when you heard them first. So when he's lying on the floor of a practice room, shirt soaked with sweat, and the first bars of "Disturbia" start to boom through the speakers, his eyes open immediately.

Someone's stretching in front of the mirror, arm pulled across her chest, bobbing her head to the beat so her ponytail sways in time with the rhythm. He raises his head a little off the ground, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, to see who it is.

"You're done with this room, right?" Nayeon asks, turning towards him, still stretching. "Sorry about not waking you up before I the music, evaluations are tomorrow and I'm," she presses her lips together, as if to stop herself from talking. Faces the mirror again, scrunching up her face. "Uh, sorry."

Brian nods. "No problem," he manages, mouth dry from napping with his mouth open. Watches as Nayeon rubs her nose with an embarrassed smile on her face before stretching her other arm.

She's been around just as long as he has - around two years and indefinitely counting - and they've seen each other around a lot, but they were always hanging out with different people. The first time Brian even remembers talking to her was earlier in the year, when he couldn't stop shaking about having a cameo in Jaebum and Jinyoung's drama.

"You'll be fine," she told him, patting him and Mark - who was just as nervous, but as still as a stone - on the back reassuringly, like he wasn't two years older than her and her bangs didn't make her look two years younger than she actually was. "Don't worry, they won't even see your face!" and when he watched the broadcast, he found that she was right.

He's seen her on screen, in that one CF she was in, and dancing with Jinyoung in that one scene (her face, unlike his, was actually shown), because all the trainees always made it a thing to watch their peers' activities during break, when that one person was in the bathroom or something. And she was good - she had that instantaneous likeability about her when she looked at the camera, had the kind of face Korea loved and wanted, textbook girl group material - and everyone knew and acknowledged it. Brian thinks about where he stands in relation to Nayeon and remembers mirrors and how stuck in one place he feels when he looks into them as he watches her start practicing.

"See you tomorrow!" she says over the music when he's walking out the door. Loud, with a smile that shows her bunny teeth - Brian's first impression of her. It's still the same, and suddenly he doesn't feel so stagnant.










The next time he thinks about Nayeon is a year later, when Brian's stopped dancing and Cecilia leaves and rumors about 6mix falling through start to circulate. He's picking at the calluses that are starting harden on his fingers from playing too much bass when he sees her sitting on the floor in the hallway, waiting for a practice room to open up. It's the first time he's seen her, really seen her, since that day she blasted "Disturbia" from the speakers and Brian, half-awake, tried his best not to mouth the lyrics.

She looks up from the page of lyrics she was studying. Looks up at him, and that's when he realizes he'd been staring. Brian almost flinches, feeling guilty for some strange reason, but she just shoots him a close-lipped smile. Her bangs have grown out and she looks different, more mature and maybe more tired, but then again, that might just come with the age. The thing is, Brian doesn't really know Nayeon and alternately, Nayeon doesn't really know Brian - calls him Younghyun instead, actually - there was this concept of time and unfamiliarity between them that they had the tacit understanding, as most familiar strangers did, of being nearly impossible to breach. He didn't know if she was still loud and talkative and putting herself and her thoughts out there while he sat in the corner, leaning against the wall next to Jaebum, poking his side when Jaebum was trying to pay attention. If she remembered patting him and Mark on the back that one time, if she was even still patting other people on the back and calming them down. All Brian really knew was that she was looking at him now, expression unreadable but not unapproachable, and she made him think of all the people he knew but didn't really know, the satellites of his life.

"Hi," she squeaks out, and if it didn't sound like she was doing her best not to cry, Brian might've thought it was cute. He bites at the loose skin on his thumb and it tears farther than he wanted it to.

"Hi," he chokes out in response. Wonders if he should say anything else, if anything he said could make her feel better - I'm sorry about everything, but that sounded like someone was dying, good luck, but he didn't even know what kind of luck she needed, I hope you're doing well, but they weren't close enough for that level of consideration. She starts chewing her bottom lip, putting the lyrics down beside her, waiting - Nayeon, who's done more predebut work than Brian could ever imagine doing, in the midst of a sea of movement he sometimes wishes he was a part of, is stagnant in this moment, stagnant like he is.

In the end, Brian gives her what he hopes is an encouraging smile in the place of all the things he could say and keeps walking down the hallway. But he ends up thinking about this encounter, and its awkward conclusion, a lot over the next few days, weeks, and by association, ends up thinking about Nayeon.










She's laughing at something Sungjin's said a couple months later, her arm looped around Lena's, other elbow nudging Jungyeon in the side on purpose. Brian's sitting with Jae a few seats away from them, a shot of soju that he remembers not wanting to take burning down his throat, in the middle of a sad excuse for a debate about why he should be studying instead of hanging out with other trainees.

"Do you find joy in stressing yourself out more?" Junhyeok adds in, and Brian feels cornered. He downs another shot and notices the soda cans Nayeon and Jungyeon are sipping from and Brian remembers they're still minors, god, they're still minors -

Jae leans back in his chair and sighs. "He probably wishes he was on a study date or something. Emphasis on date."

Brian feels his face heat up - from the shots he's taken, not Jae's comment - at that. "We actually do study, thank you very much," he grumbles, stealing a sip of Wonpil's soda and accepting his loss. Jae just rolls his eyes and Junhyeok laughs and Wonpil calls the waiter over to bring another coke. When he looks back over at Sungjin, who's now explaining something using his hands maybe a little too much, he catches Nayeon looking at him, or something right behind his head - there are a lot of decorations on the walls - and she averts her gaze right away.

Twenty minutes later, they're both waiting in line for the restaurant's one restroom and Brian lets her stand in front of him because he doesn't actually have to go, he just has to call Minseo since it's a Saturday night, and Nayeon smiles a close-lipped smile and doesn't ask.

"I saw you on TV," she starts, breaking the awkward silence between them. Brian turns his head toward her. "On that YG program and you rapped and sang with your members." Rubs the ball of her nose, glancing at the bathroom door before glancing back up at him. "You were really good."

Brian remembers the excitement of getting to appear on the program, being excited when performing, feeling like he was going somewhere, not as stagnant anymore, and that translated to hiding his face behind his arms when he watched the broadcast with s - especially when they shot to him throwing the peace sign to the other trainees, why did he think that was a good idea at the time - but feeling giddy and accomplished at the same time. Minseo sent him texts with her live reactions, ranging from really, toronto canada? ㅋㅋ to so cool, my younghyun ♡ and he laughed at all of them, the warmth that he felt everytime he saw her in his chest.

He smiles, thinking about it. "Thanks," he says, and it goes silent between them again. Nayeon turns away, and Brian sees her raise her eyebrows, searching for something else to say, though he honestly doesn't mind the quiet. Minseo was like him in that aspect, too, and they often sat in comfortable silence, her feet propped on his lap with her textbook on her stomach. He'd lean over and kiss her then and she'd cup his face with her hands and they'd both smile, looking at each other, just like that. In contrast, watching Nayeon think about what else to say made Brian feel nervous, like he should be contributing to fill the void, too.

He's wondering if he should bring up his embarrassment when the gears visibly seem to click in her head. "I heard you're dating?" she says all of a sudden, too loud, and it's so awkward that Brian wants to laugh, but he can't. He rubs the back of his neck instead.

"Uh...yeah," he replies, feeling a sheepish smile spread on his face. Nayeon looks sharply at the bathroom door, like she's hoping it will open and undo what she's just done, but it stays closed. She laughs, a little loud, trying to compensate.

"You're lucky," she tells him, and it hits Brian then that he has something that Nayeon - the Im Nayeon, the girl they're calling the "second Bae Suzy" - probably won't be able to have until her career is over. And while she's surpassed him, them all, in how many pre-debut opportunities she's gotten, Brian - stagnant, or so at least he thought - still had things she didn't.

She looks back up at him and sighs loudly. "I'm so jealous - "

The restroom door opens then, a mother holding her young daughter's hand coming through the narrow hallway. He absentmindedly puts a hand on Nayeon's shoulder and motions her to make way for them and she jumps slightly, flustered, muttering to herself why am I such a mess today, can't even make way for people, can you before heading to the bathroom.

He doesn't know what to think about it, her, Nayeon. Spends the time she's in the bathroom trying to discern why their small talk is so awkward and once she opens the door, looking somewhat surprised to still see him there, like she forgot why he was there in the first place, she tells him good night, Younghyun before ducking her head down in some sort of shame and practically speed walking back to the table.

Brian laughs, amused. When he unlocks his phone to call Minseo, he realizes she's probably already asleep.










He's watching GOT7's debut music video with Wonpil during a break when it comes out. "What do you think about Nayeon?" he asks through a mouthful of the snacks that Wonpil hates sharing because they're his favorite.

Wonpil's nose scrunches up as he dusts the crumbs the escape Brian's mouth off his laptop. He's been around for practically forever, like Brian and Nayeon have, but not quite like Jisoo's eternity, so Brian trusts that he'd know what to say. "Nayeon?" Wonpil repeats, rubbing the back of his neck. Brian nods and reaches for more of the snacks, which Wonpil reluctantly lets him have. "I don't know," he says while taking a picture of Jinyoung on his screen, probably so he can send it to him later.

Brian pinches Wonpil's side, at which Wonpil frowns. "What do you think about Nayeon?" he asks again, laughing at Wonpil's whiny hyung, you're so annoying!

He watches as Wonpil thinks about it. "She's the loud type. Too loud for you," he tells Brian, in all honesty, after considering. Brian raises his eyebrows at that. "I mean, that's why you asked, right, hyung?” he smiles, lilt in his voice obviously teasing.

He pinches Wonpil's side again. "Who do you think I am, Pil-ah?" he laughs. “A player?” The music video, on loop, shows Nayeon's face again. She's not smiling in it, but she is on Wonpil's laptop screen. Brian wonders if her two front teeth are still huge as he reaches for another handful of Wonpil's snacks.











Minseo breaks up with him before the year ends. It happens during the first time they’ve met up in person for a while - there’d been calls every other day first, her asking him how practice was going, him asking her how her internship was, both of them staying up too late laughing over jokes that weren’t even funny, or telling each other to hang up first, and then there’d been calls once a week, forgotten once in a while, and then there were lukewarm replies to his texts asking if she’d eaten or gotten enough sleep.

“I can’t be in a relationship where I barely see you,” is what she tells him, and she’s sitting right beside him in the passenger seat but she feels farther away than ever, even when she looks him straight in the eye when she says it. Eye contact is crucial! he remembers her insisting once, when he was helping her by asking her questions in a mock job interview. She’d always been particular about things like that - public speaking and networking tips. It makes Brian wonder if Minseo came here, convincing herself that this was a business transaction, and not breaking his heart, because some part of him always held onto the hope that it’d all be okay once they saw each other again. She was Minseo, and she called him my Younghyun and he told her everything, from his deepest insecurities and worst fears to what he ate for breakfast and his dreams from the night before.

He wants to ask her why not, but he takes a deep breath instead and wonders if that kind of question is appropriate. She’s wearing a new perfume that smells nothing like her old one, and Brian realizes when Minseo turns her head to look at him again that she’s changed and he’s changed - they weren’t the same two people they’d been when they studied together until four in the morning, chased out of the library because she’d screamed, half-laughing, at him for throwing tiny wads of notebook paper at her when she was finishing problem sets, but rather distorted, fun-house mirror images of themselves back then, when they decided they’d liked each other. So instead, Brian says, “okay,” and she kisses him on the cheek, gives him a small smile and hug and leaves with the part of his heart that wasn’t ready to accept that things were different. It breaks him.

No one asks, so he doesn’t talk about it. Their debut’s coming and they can all feel it, so Brian throws himself into that instead. Practices hours after everyone else leaves because he’s still off rhythm ("You’re not," Sungjin insists, but Brian just keeps playing until they eventually leave with a don’t be here too late) and if he cries once he puts down the bass, too tired to go on, he tells himself it’s because the pads of his fingertips feel raw from the strings.

And if he sees a girl still practicing down the hallway as he’s leaving, he doesn’t really think about her.










They see each other again after Brian's met Dowoon and Nayeon's debut is pushed back again. It's one in the morning and Brian's thinking he never wants to play this song ever again even when they haven't performed it yet when he sees Nayeon looking in at them practicing through the glass window on the door. Her eyes widen when she realizes that he's seen her, quickly disappearing from the window. Curious, Brian puts down his bass and excuses himself to go to the bathroom - to which Jae, who probably saw Nayeon outside, raises his eyebrows in amusement - hoping that it doesn't look like he's half-running to the door when it feels like he is.

She's standing next to the door when he opens it, her back flat against the wall, and she flinches at the sudden movement. She ducks her head down when he closes the door and moves to lean his back against the part of the wall that's next to her.

"I'm sorry if I distracted you guys," she blurts out suddenly, surprising him. "I was just watching, I should really go back now..."

"It's okay," Brian says. "We're taking a break now, anyway." He looks down at the permanent callus that's embedded itself into his right thumb. She follows his gaze, silent, before looking away abruptly when she sees that he caught her looking.

Her hair's longer than it was the last time he saw her, but otherwise, nothing's really changed. Still waiting to see if he'll say anything more, like that time in the hallway, just a little impatient about it this time.

She speaks first, instead. "You guys sound good," and she sounds like she means it. That was one of the things about Nayeon. She was loud and spoke almost too much, but she always said what she felt and it was sometimes disarming and overwhelming, and other times heartwarming. When he looks back at her, she's smiling and her two front teeth are the same bunny teeth he remembers them being.

"Thanks," he swallows, pushing down a nervous knot in his throat that he didn't even know was there. "We've been practicing hard."

Nayeon looks down at her shoes, a well-worn pair of sneakers, the toes of them scuffed. It reminds him of dancing, dance practices and classes and the times he saw Nayeon in them, but didn't really register that she was there. "You guys don't even sound like trainees," she continues. "And you look cool playing the - what is it?" Her eyes are on him again, head tilted slightly, questioning, and her hair falls over her shoulder, some of it coming loose from where she'd tucked it behind her left ear and covering her face. When she brushes it back into place, Brian notices how beautiful Nayeon's gotten, and he doesn't know how he hadn't noticed it before, but it suddenly makes him hyperaware of her presence and the proximity between them.

"Bass," he manages to say before it gets awkward. Swallows again. "Bass guitar."

She mimics playing a guitar instead, probably trying to show him how "cool" he looked, and it would usually get on Brian's nerves, but it doesn't. He laughs, and it only makes her exaggerate her playing more.

She doesn't stop until she hears the door click open behind her, throwing her hands down immediately with a guilty grin on her face. Dowoon looks from Brian, who's trying to keep his face neutral, to Nayeon, who's doing the same but failing miserably with her teeth peeking out between pressed-together lips every now and then, then back to Brian, getting a grasp of the situation before him, before mumbling a shy we're going to start soon, Younghyun hyung and retreating back behind the door.

Nayeon starts laughing a beat after Dowoon's gone. Brian laughs, too, not as loud as Nayeon, but just as amused. When it fizzles down, she glances back at the door before turning back to him.

"Well, you should probably get back to practicing," she says, breaking the silence first.

He looks down at his shoes, then over to hers. "Yeah," he echoes. Looks back at her.

She reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. "You guys are great," she says, meeting his eyes, sincere, and he believes her, that she means it and that it's true.

Brian doesn't blush, but he remembers where Nayeon's hand touched his shoulder for some odd reason the next morning when he's showering. And in the spray of the water, he places a hand there, and it reminds him of when she pat his back reassuringly with her small hand all those years ago.










It’s 2015 and he’s in the middle of trying to write lyrics, Sungjin sitting next to him, bouncing his leg so that the whole couch vibrates, when he thinks about Nayeon again. The last time they did this, Brian pressed so hard on the paper that it ripped several times when he was writing, remembering when he saw pictures of Minseo with another guy a month after they’d broken up and how he’d felt his heart beating in his throat then. She'd made it look so easy, getting over him, when it'd been hard for him to remember not to shoot her a text asking if she slept well the night before.

He’s been thinking about her more than he used to these days, Nayeon, not Minseo, and Brian’s not sure why. Maybe it's because she shows up on TV one night a week now and he’s heard about what people have been saying about her online and how she’s dropping on the polls and all he thinks is that she doesn’t deserve any of that, but once you’re in the public eye, you don’t get to decide what you deserve.

One day he says, “This is ridiculous,” to Junhyeok, anyway, about the whole situation. Junhyeok just looks over at him from where he’s trying to memorize this part he always forgets in one of their songs by playing some version of air-keyboard.

“Pretty concerned about someone, aren’t you?” he says, before studying his music sheets again, and Brian coughs, wondering if he should correct him.

“I just don’t get how people can be so critical when they don’t even know the person they’re talking about,” he says instead. Junhyeok taps his pencil against his chin before scribbling a note in the margin of the measures.

“You know that’s going to happen when we debut, too,” Junhyeok tells him, still looking at his music. “Think about yourself for a second.”

Brian frowns. “It’s not like I wasn’t,” he insists, to which Junhyeok just hums a sure that Brian knows he doesn’t mean, and then he wonders if Nayeon expected this kind of response when she joined Sixteen - not like she had a choice in the matter, really, it was either that or waiting again - and then it occurs to him that maybe Junhyeok was right.

It was weird. They were practically strangers - he didn’t even know where in Korea Nayeon was from and she probably thought he was born in Toronto, and their conversations had never been anything more than small talk and relatively generic, but encouraging, words. The version of Nayeon in his head felt like a flat image of the real person, not at all how it’d been like with Minseo, telling each other almost everything, and Brian wondered if his conceptions of her were spot-on or completely missing the mark. He then thinks about the time she told him you look cool and how his heart started fluttering, the way she almost told him her whole life’s story before stopping herself in that practice room when he still danced all those years ago. Their awkward but amusing encounter in front of the restroom. The way he walked by a practice room once not too long ago and saw her hugging one of the other trainees on the program, crying.

And she wasn’t Minseo. She was two years younger than him, shorter where Minseo had been tall, not wired on practicality in the place of her dreams, with larger front teeth - someone always relatively far away even when they were both stagnant, waiting to debut, waiting for five years now. Brian didn’t feel like he knew her from the inside out and maybe that was why he thought about her so much, trying to make sense of everything, but in the end, everything still didn’t make sense.

Then: would he stop thinking about her?

Was it even okay to like someone you didn’t know that well?











The first person he asks is Jae, on the grounds that no one else was around. Brian's picking at the callus on his thumb and Jae's strumming random melodies on his guitar when he just says it for the hell of it.

Jae pushes his glasses up. "Dude, I didn't even think Nayeon was your type," he says, unsurprised, and Brian just stares at him, confused and somewhat offended for some reason he wasn't sure of.

"Well, who did you think was my type then?" Brian asks, taking the guitar from Jae. The last time he really played was probably months ago.

Jae shrugs, leaning back in his chair. "Ayeon, maybe?" who is the second person Brian asks.

They're backstage and Ayeon's in the middle of her vocal warm-ups and he's going over his lines in his head when the thought comes to him.

Ayeon takes a sip of her water before replying. "What's wrong with that? Isn't that what crushes are?"

"I thought that was just attraction, but," Brian frowns, remembering he shouldn't run a hand through his already-styled hair. "I don't know. I don't even know her favorite food or color or anything but I guess I think about her a lot?"

A staff member calls them, telling them that it's almost their time to record. Ayeon, singer-songwriter with a number one hit about a one-sided love under her belt, validating any advice she gives him, laughs as she stands up and tells him this: "There's your answer."










He doesn’t see her again until after they’ve both stood on a stage with their respective group and group names behind them, albums out and charting. Brian’s staring into his drink, and it’s light enough to see his reflection in it - his bleached hair falling into his eyes and the makeup that’s still on his face - and for a moment, he can’t believe that is himself looking back at him from the liquid in his glass. He’s having a hard time believing a lot of the things he sees these days, from huge crowds coming to watch them perform in foreign countries, to people singing along with him when they’re busking by the Han River, because it all feels like a dream, and he hasn’t been sleeping enough to let it sink in, but every time Brian wakes up, he finds that it’s real.

“Congratulations on your debut!” someone says behind him and Brian nearly jumps out of his skin. When he turns around, Nayeon’s laughing a little, covering her smile with a hand. There’s a drink like his in her hand, mostly untouched, but she looks like herself, just a bit more tired, maybe, and a little more like someone he’d see on a TV screen than standing in front of him. Brian blinks, suddenly thinking about how much he’s thought of her and it makes him slightly dizzy.

“Sorry,” she adds on, looking guilty when he doesn’t reply. Her hair is darker - it wasn’t the last time he saw her, passing by each other in the hallway with their respective groups and they bowed to one another. “I didn’t want to scare you or anything, I just - "

Brian shakes his head. His face feels a little warm. “You didn’t,” he laughs, nervously, wondering what to say next. Awkward pause. “And thank you."

Nayeon beams at him, anyway. “Look at us now, huh?” She pats him on the shoulder like she did that one time, telling him you guys are great, and Brian totally believed her because he wanted to and she meant it, or at least he hoped she did. He does what she says, looks at her, still shorter than him, and her bunny teeth still there, charming. But now she’s debuted and he’s debuted and they weren’t quite the same people they were five years ago, when they first met but didn’t get to know each other. Brian feels his heart beat a little faster in his chest, thinking about everything that’s happened from then to now, all the times they spoke in between those thoughts - and maybe they even consumed him sometimes - so he swallows and laughs again, nodding.

“Congratulations to you, too,” he tells her, readjusting his grip on the glass in his hands. He almost drops it.

Nayeon laughs. “Like your song,” she explains, noticing his confused smile. She raps the first line of his rap and it’s not bad, but she’s exaggerating the emphasized syllables more than Brian even does and it’s so Nayeon - like the way she played air guitar - that he laughs. When she’s done, she looks somewhat embarrassed. “I hope you’re not angry when you say that, though,” she adds.

“No,” Brian reassures her with a grin. “You could be on Unpretty Rapstar.”

She shrieks at that and pokes his shoulder, hard, and it tingles. “And you’re such a charmer,” Nayeon retorts, using his lyrics. She clicks her tongue in mock-annoyance when she sees he’s still smiling at her. “Seriously…”

Silence settles between them for a moment, amicable smiles on their face. Then one of the other Twice girls calls “Nayeon!” from somewhere in the room, “we’re about to take a picture!”

Nayeon shoots Brian an apologetic look. “I should go then,” she starts, trailing off, glancing around to find her other members. Meets his eyes again and smiles and she’s beautiful, she’s the girl who tried to calm his nerves before his first time recording for a broadcast, the girl who debuted even though there were negative comments about her, the girl he doesn’t know all that well but thinks about too much all the same, there during the five years Brian thought he was stagnant, stagnant like he was somewhere in the same universe as him, practicing. There’s your answer, Ayeon had told him - and Nayeon wasn’t Minseo who didn’t really get it, but she also wasn’t Minseo who Brian had thought knew him almost as well as he knew himself, and that scares him, but he doesn’t want to be scared forever, so he takes a chance.

He reaches for Nayeon’s hand as she turns to leave, the one that doesn’t have the beer in it. She turns around, looking at Brian’s hand in hers, surprised, and he’s probably blushing now. He feels just about fifteen again, and she’s not fifteen anymore, Brian remembers - he’s twenty-three and she’s twenty-one now - she has a beer in her hand and she hasn’t had bangs in years, and she’s probably never dated anyone the way she really wants to. Brian knows he can’t promise her anything, doesn’t even know if she thinks of him as anything other than a co-worker, but he just wants to try this time, the way he and Minseo couldn’t.

After what seems like five years of stagnancy, Nayeon meets his eyes and smiles up at him, bunny teeth and all.

And that’s when Brian feels everything move.