“Guys this room is a mess! I told you they’re coming over today.”

Jun hadn’t quite believed it when Seungcheol had informed the Seventeen members that the Twice girls were coming over. Not a few of them like last time, but the whole group. Apparently Nayeon had gotten closer to the other ’95 liners than everyone had realized.

“What has gotten into him?” Minghao mutters derisively in Mandarin as he sweeps the floor, casting Seungcheol a critical look when he has his back turned.

Minghao may look cute, but he definitely bites.

The girls parade in and their greetings vary from ostentatious to reticent. Mina and Momo waver by the door in their perpetual shyness while Mingyu steals Chaeyoung’s hat and holds it up high while she jumps to get it back in futility. He just pushes a finger against her forehead to hold her at arms length and plops it on his own head, grinning wickedly.

“You are the worst,” Chaeyoung growls. She probably bites, too.

Tzuyu approaches Minghao first, casting Jun a few glances across the room as she speaks to him. Jun tries not to read too much into that, but he has the distinct impression that they linger longer than usual. It’s probably all in his head, he thinks, pushing the thought from his mind.

Jungyeon approaches Jun and Wonwoo, commenting on the fact that they’re all ’96 liners. Jun says that they should be friends if that’s the case, causing her to blush. His friendliness is too often misconstrued as forwardness by Koreans, this reminds him, and he tries to stay cordial towards her for the rest of the conversation.

“We have a surprise for you,” Jihyo says to Dokyeom and Hoshi as she bounces up and down on the balls of her feet.

“What do you mean?” Sana asks blankly beside her, fixing Jihyo with a confused look.

“The thing!” Jihyo exclaims. Sana just stares at her, perplexed. “The thing… the thing where we did… and you know, the other day…” Jihyo gestures ambiguously along with her words and Sana nods along slowly, still lost, until she pauses and then realization visibly washes over her.

“Oh! The thing!” Sana nods fervently and her silvery curls bounce up and down in her enthusiasm. She and Jihyo jump together excitedly and laugh at her realization, leaving Dokyeom and Hoshi to stare at them, smiling politely but utterly bewildered.

After dinner everyone crowds around the TV to see the thing. Last week Twice filmed a dance relay for Mnet, a video in which they covered an assortment of boy group dances including Seventeen’s most recent song, and tagged Seventeen to do it next. Seventeen will have to cover Twice’s dance if they accept the tag, so some of the girls busy themselves with trying to teach them the choreography for ‘Like Ooh-Ahh’. Predictably the guys goof off, which frustrates their main teacher, Sana.

“You have to take this seriously, guys!” Sana whines, shuffling her feet in annoyance; Seungkwan and Hoshi are the only ones paying full attention to her. Wonwoo isn’t even standing, instead marking the moves from his seat on the couch.

The group eventually gets involved in playing a game but Tzuyu notices Minghao disappear from the chaos. After he’s gone for a few minutes she decides to check on him, excusing herself by halfheartedly muttering something about going to the bathroom, not that anyone pays her leaving much mind.

Tzuyu cracks the door into Minghao’s bedroom and it’s hazy and half lit, the only lighting the dregs of dusk coming in through a single window. Minghao’s perched up on a top bunk, and he pulls out his headphones when he notices Tzuyu close the door behind her.

“Whatcha doing?” Tzuyu asks, approaching the bunks.

“Needed a break from the mayhem out there, is all,” Minghao replies.

“Same,” she says, climbing up the ladder to join him on the top bunk.

Minghao plugs his phone into a mcguyvered speaker system he’s got set up and puts on some mellow hiphop. Tzuyu’s glad for it; she prefers this kind of music the most since it suits her calm disposition. She sits at the top of the bed and jokingly rests her legs in Minghao’s lap, but when she moves them away he pulls them back into place, draping his arms across her legs. Tzuyu’s amused but pleased by that; she and Minghao seem to always have this unspoken playfulness between them. They're both more the quiet types, the reason they looked for a respite from the craziness in the living room in the first place, but they’ve both got a lurking feisty side to go along with it.

"So you never told me why you came to Korea," Tzuyu starts. Minghao cuts her a confused look.

"Haven't I?"

"Well, I know you were scouted at a dance thing like me, but what's the full story? The one you don’t tell in interviews, I mean."

As much as they're friends, Minghao has managed to remain somewhat of an enigma to her. He doesn't talk much about his past or personal stuff, at least not as much as Jun. Where Jun will never shut up, Minghao takes some prying.

"Well, I was 16 when I came here and I had been bboying for about 6 years by that point."

He casts his eyes up to the ceiling and then over at Tzuyu.

"You probably wonder why I left home for such a small company, but I was just ready to go at that point. The crowd I ran with was all about dancing and the craft, but… there was some ever-present dark surrounding the scene," Minghao says ominously.

"Dark ?" Tzuyu asks, intrigued. "Like… gangs and stuff?"

"Yeah," Minghao says, and his flippant acknowledgement of it is dismaying. "I mean, it's to be expected with anything underground ‘cause it’s in the streets. I tried to stay out of the sketchy parts, but I saw some people get roughed up and I stayed in the scene anyway." He tugs at his tiny silver hoop earring, an uncharacteristic gesture of nervousness for him. Normally Minghao is the picture of unflappable. "But then someone I kinda knew got killed and it was just... over. I knew I had to get out."

"Wait, what? Killed?" Tzuyu asks, her eyebrows drawing together in surprise, not sure if her ears are serving her properly. From the looks of Minghao, with his rainbow hair, wiry stature and cute features, she'd never have pegged him to be involved in anything unscrupulous. Then again it makes sense for his quiet, subdued demeanor and the sharp, biting manner of speaking that often punctuates it.

"Yeah. But don't go around saying this, by the way."

"Obviously," she reassures him.

"I mean, even some of my group members don't even know." Minghao gives her a look that reads as vulnerable, a rare thing for how much as he seems to avoid coming across that way.

"Then why are you telling me?" Tzuyu asks, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger in uncertainty.

"You asked, and I trust you. I don't feel like you're gonna go out and tell the world or something," Minghao says. It’s reassuring to hear but so sad how they have to consider that when confiding in friends. Every personal detail about them is consumable, something to be bought and sold. Trust too then comes at an intangible price. "Besides, I don't even know the words to say half of this stuff in Korean. Too much effort." He says with a short, lighthearted laugh to lift the mood.

This makes Tzuyu wonder what she's really done to earn Minghao’s trust, other than just be there for him. Though, people have this way of sharing their secrets with her unprompted, like her quietude is enough reassurance for them. Maybe it's why she gets deemed wise for her age, because she's lived a dozen lifetimes through the stories shared with her alone.

"So you were never involved with it?" she asks, dubious of if she truly wants to hear his answer. She doesn’t want to think of Minghao that way, if he did do anything reprehensible, but her curiosity gets the best of her.

"I tried to stay out of it, but you gotta defend yourself. I carried a knife but I never needed to use it. After the guy I knew died I looked around and realized what the hell I had gotten myself into and that it wasn't the life I wanted. I got scouted by Pledis around that time and it was like the universe telling me to go," Minghao says with a shrug. For the heaviness of the topic he talks about it in such a breezy, nonchalant way.

“That’s good that you got out of there,” Tzuyu nods. She doesn’t really know what else to say.

“It wasn’t easy. I lost a lot of friends. Had to end things with my girlfriend at the time. The weeks between when I was cast and actually left a lot of people gave me about it,” Minghao says. “People will try to drag ya down to their level, not to say that I’m above my old friends or anything… but some people I know only ended up getting in deeper in the sketchy parts of the underground scene, that’s for sure.”

"You make my story seen tame." Tzuyu observes.

"How old were you when you left Taiwan?" Minghao asks.

"13."

"It seemed tame when I was 13, too,” Minghao says with a short laugh. “You never know what people are hiding from you cause you're too young. Or what you're too naive to notice."

He doesn’t say it in a particularly serious way, but the weightiness of that seems to hang in the air for a moment, still.

Just then Mingyu tumbles into the room.

“Guys, Chaeyoung’s finally about to rap battle with Wonwoo,” Mingyu says excitedly, waving them over with his signature wide, crooked grin.

“Let’s go,” Minghao says, scooting to the edge of the bed and helping Tzuyu down.

Minghao said it all so easily but it feels like they’ve found a new unspoken understanding between the two of them. Up until now, their friendship has been mainly lighthearted, with lots of jokes and shooting the breeze. Tzuyu’s glad that Minghao confided in her; it gives their relationship a dimension of complexity that it had been lacking up until this point. Tzuyu never pegged him for all of this, that’s for certain, and they likely won’t revisit this conversation, but knowing it all means that Minghao’s quirks make a whole lot more sense.

It’s late February when Twice is called into JYPE for a meeting. Originally they hadn’t been scheduled to, so the girls sulk a bit because it’s already midnight and they had so been looking forward to watching a movie together tonight after their practices.

One of the JYPE PR representatives enters the conference room they’re gathered in, bowing and greeting the girls. The rep has her hair bound up in a bun and sports dark circles under her eyes; she likely works just as many hours as the girls do but with no team of professionals to artfully conceal the physical tells. She pulls a stack of papers from her briefcase and begins.

“Tomorrow an artist under JYP will have a scandal break. Here is our PR plan for how you all will respond to the situation,” she says, passing the papers around.

“Omo, Junhyeok?” Jungyeon says, staring at the front page in disbelief, referring to one of the members of Day6, a group that debuted nearly two months before Twice.

“Is it true?” Chaeyoung asks, leafing through the stapled handout.

“As of yet, that’s uncertain. Unfortunately, it looks likely,” the PR representative explains.

“Is JYP issuing a statement?” Nayeon asks, the top page of her packet held aloft as she glances up from her scanning.

“Yes. You’ll find the contents of it on page 5 of your handout,” the PR rep says. “Junhyeok will, unfortunately, be departing from JYP.”

The group is full of murmurs of shock and disbelief. Day6 debuted less than two months before Twice, and makes it more tangible that they are not immune to fragmentation in the group, even this early on. Not that they’ve ever felt completely secure since Tzuyu’s scandal in January, but still. This is the first JYP artist to depart from a group since Jay Park left 2PM years ago. Their immunity to discord is nothing but an illusion, and it’s shattered anew today.

“I’m here to inform you of all of this, but I’m also here to remind you of the dating clause in your contracts. You all should be reminded that the company will not protect our artists in the event of a dating scandal within 3 years after debut. Public notoriety is precarious and to be seen as dating is damaging and will jeopardize the future of your group and by extension, the company. Please stay mindful of that. You all have done well not to be seen in questionable situations, but we suggest that you all steer clear of any further interaction with males for the time being, particularly while the public spotlight is on JYP.”

Tzuyu doesn’t have to ask to know who all of the rest of her group members are thinking of. They’re friendly with other boy groups, but this would put a damper most directly on their burgeoning friendships with the Seventeen members. Tzuyu had been hopeful that they’d become close, like she heard that 2PM and SNSD once were, but it may not be meant to be. If only they could’ve spent a little more time together, before all of this.

The girls return home, the mood in the car and at the dorm subdued from the late hour and the bad news. They always make an effort to be cheerful and resilient but there’s an undercurrent of worry; the calm before the storm that the breaking news tomorrow will surely bring.

After showering and changing into her pajamas Tzuyu heads to the kitchen for a mug of tea before bed. She finds Jihyo already there, brewing her own cup.

Jihyo turns around and locks eyes with Tzuyu. There’s something between sadness and pity there. The news isn’t good for Jihyo, either.

“Do I need to say it?” Jihyo asks morosely. Tzuyu hesitantly shakes her head ‘no’, selecting a box of tea from the cabinet to occupy her nervous hands.

“I know how much Jun and Minghao mean to you, but let’s lay low and think of the group for a while. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of what it was like to be protected during a scandal.”

Jihyo isn’t commanding and it’s not a lecture, she just sounds tired and overwhelmed. She’s normally the bubbly and brazen leader but every once in a while her cracks start to show. She must be affected by this news more than Tzuyu thought, and Tzuyu wonders what’s going on with Jihyo. Tzuyu abruptly feels like a bad friend for not paying more mind to her situation.

What Jihyo says drags up bitter memories though, of the scandal Tzuyu went through months ago. Tzuyu doesn’t show it to avoid being a burden and because she’s not one to share uncomfortable emotions, but there was a lasting impression. Jihyo’s right; Tzuyu can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to endure a scandal without the company supporting her every step of the way. They defended her to the media and never once made threats to remove her from the group, and if anything the company’s management of Twice after the fact had rocketed the group to further success. Facing it without that support seems… unimaginable.

It’s frustrating, too: the judgment of her personal life by the public, the utter commodification of her being, and the way that things she says could affect her sales, like a product. It’s part of the job that she didn’t anticipate in full. As much as they had been coached on etiquette and expectations of what not to say in interviews and on broadcasts, nothing truly prepared her for it. The disconnect and dehumanization in that is jarring to consider too deeply and too often. Idols are less than human to some; maybe that’s what Jihyo’s grappling with most. She traded her youth for this and could hardly be anything else, even if she wanted to. It’s easier to just think that she’s a kid fulfilling her dream, but moments like this make it difficult to ignore the less pleasant aspects that underlie their reality.

Weibo—group chat

Jun, 7:14pm: still on for dinner tomorrow?

Tzuyu 7:14pm: actually I can’t

Tzuyu, 7:15pm: another JYP artist had a dating scandal so I have to lay low for a while

Tzuyu, 7:15pm: sorry guys :/

Minghao, 7:16pm: no worries

Jun, 7:16pm: yeah sorry zhou :/

Jun tries to ignore the seed of disappointment growing in his chest in the weeks following. It seems like article after article floods the press, all of them discussing Day6 Junhyeok’s removal and JYP’s dating policy, ad nauseum. JYP artists cannot date for 3 years, he reads over and over. Like a reminder he never needed nor wanted. He tries to remind himself that his talk with Ryeowook was purely from a moral uncertainty standpoint, so it’s not that he misses Tzuyu like that. Their relationship has never been meant for more than friendship.

Sometimes Tzuyu wakes up the middle of the night, sheets soaked with sweat because in her dreams her world is crashing down around her, she is being villainized, fired, attacked. Every time it happens she picks up the phone and opens her messages to Jun, wavering for a moment in indecision before locking it and dropping it back onto her nightstand. She doesn’t need to concern him with this. It’s just her brain going off the rails for no reason. She refuses to call herself traumatized.

It’s halfway through March now, three weeks since the Day6 Junhyeok dating scandal broke, and Seventeen is gearing up for a comeback in just over a month. Every day is filled with what feels like endless practice, choreographing, workouts and costume fittings, hours of sleep cut down to the bare minimum already. Jun’s on the performance team so he’s tasked with working on the choreography for ‘Chuck,’ their secondary promoted track, with the other performance team members. His Korean is decent but not good enough to write lyrics and he doesn’t know how to produce or compose, so choreography is the one thing he can contribute to the team.

Hoshi is normally fun and lighthearted but in the studio he’s serious and down to business. Maybe it’s all in Jun’s head but it feels like everything he suggests gets breezed over or dismissed, and Jun has started to feel useless because this is the only thing he can contribute to and still it feels like he’s coming up with nothing.

Jun has gone this long without talking to Tzuyu plenty of times in the past but the lack of control and finality of it this time is starting to play games with his mind. Thinking about it is only serving to throw into sharp clarity the things that he let fall by the wayside in the last few months. When was the last time he stayed late in the studio alone? When was the last time he came up with choreography of his own accord? When was the last time that he turned off the practice room lights as the last to leave?

He’s starting to feel demoralized by it all. Woozi is predictably harsh in recording, and that’s nothing new. Jun knows it’s because he wants their new tracks to be the best they can and received well; they all do. It still chips away at his morale.

They day after they get their parts for their promotional single, Jun stays late in the practice room. He has one line. One. It’s not even repeated throughout the song.

He needs to dance and not think right now. He puts on track after track, throwing himself at the floor and into his movements. What he doesn’t know is that Seungcheol is watching him, even when he flops flat onto his back in defeat and presses his palm to his eyes, letting out a frustrated yell.

Jun’s so burnt out, raw around the edges, and he doesn’t know what to do. He feels like not enough and doesn’t know how to be more. He feels like a disappointment, to everyone. He wants to be there for his team members but feels like they’re carrying him on their backs towards success, and he’s just riding along in the current, them dry. He’s falling short, way under what he needs to be doing. His palms come away from his eyes, wet. He didn’t even realize that the frustration would elicit this response from him until it’s here.

Jun forces himself to get up the ground and plays the track he’s supposed to be choreographing to over and over, until he has a semblance of something to show for himself tomorrow. It’s late in the night when he finally lets himself leave. He’s the last to turn out the lights, this time.

The next day Jun shows what he’s got to the performance team—Hoshi, Dino and Minghao—and their reactions seem lukewarm.

“Well… here’s what I’ve got,” Hoshi says, rewinding the song to the same spot. He shows his choreography, and it’s harder hitting and more dynamic than Jun’s. Jun doesn’t know where Hoshi comes out of this stuff from, and it’s impressive but defeating all the same.

“Fine. Fine,” Jun seethes, trying and failing to mediate his irritation.

“Jun, what’s up with you today?” Minghao asks tentatively.

“Nothing’s up. Nothing. Except that everything I do keeps getting shot down so why the am I even here?” Jun says in annoyance, slamming his water bottle down, trying in vain to withhold his temper.

“Whoa, Jun, you alright man?” Hoshi asks, eyes wavering with wariness and concern. Jun doesn’t see it though; his temper is already boiling over.

“No, Hoshi. No I’m ing not,” Jun rakes his hands impatiently through his hair.

“Maybe you should take a breather,” Hoshi says hesitantly, like he’s talking to an agitated animal. Jun knows he’s being irrational, and that he should soften at the way that everyone is treating him, but he can’t take it right now. He’s normally so unlike this but it’s all coming to a head today. He brushes past Hoshi, still bristling, and runs up the stairs by two until he reaches the top floor of the Pledis building, breaking out the door to the roof where the cool spring air hits him in a gust. He stumbles out of the doorway and catches himself against the railing of the roof, folding his arms against it and leaning forward, chest heaving in exertion.

He just feels so useless, like he’s dragging his team down, and he just made everything absolutely worse.

Jun doesn’t go back to practice later that day. He can’t face the performance team right now. He knows his outburst was way out of line, but there’s been this continuous disquiet building in him that has to be a sign of something bigger. It goes beyond them or him. He’s been holding things in and it all came out today, in a messy, embarrassing way.

The members all fight amongst themselves from time to time; it’s to be expected with the pressure they face, with so many of them trying to fulfill so many roles for their groups production and all of the guys with differing opinions and dispositions. Jun’s usually an outsider to all of the conflict though, a bystander or a mediator, so it feels doubly embarrassing for him to have blown up like he did. He’s usually so optimistic, but evidently he’s fallible, too.

When Jun gets back to the dorm, Seungcheol is the first person he sees at the door. The gaze Seungcheol fixes Jun with tells Jun that he knows everything, even though the performance team isn’t home yet.

“Wash up, Jun. Let’s go out tonight,” Seungcheol says perfunctorily. There’s no use in fighting it.

It’s just Jun and Seungcheol at the bar this time, the smoky room abuzz with the noise of men playing pool and glasses clinking against various surfaces, the hall filled with salarymen come to work off some stress after hours.

“Jun, you’ve got to stop keeping everything to yourself,” Seungcheol says. Jun just toys with the glass in his hand, swirling the dregs of his beer around before taking a gulp. He doesn’t know what to say to Seungcheol because it’s all this nebulous cloud of discontent that he doesn’t know how to put into words.

“Bottling things up only leads to them exploding later,” Seungcheol says, hesitating. “Like today.”

So Seungcheol knows everything, as Jun suspected. In great detail, Jun has no doubt.

“What’s gotten into you these days? You’re normally never like this at all. I want to help you but I can’t read your mind,” Seungcheol says.

Jun breathes a sigh, letting his eyes fall shut and sticking his tongue out between his lips to wet them, before pressing them together in a line.

“Why am I here, Seungcheol? What do I even do? I… I…” Jun trails off, staring through the wall in front of him.

“Whoa, Jun, what are you saying?” Seungcheol’s perplexed, looking at Jun with true confusion on his face.

“Face it. I can’t choreograph. I barely sing on our title track. I dance buried behind 12 other people, for the most part,” Jun says, taking a gulp from his drink.

“Jun, you’re asking why you’re on the team?” Seungcheol asks in disbelief, and something akin to amusement, like the idea of Jun being disposable is laughable to him. “Jun, we all feel like we’re not doing enough sometimes. It’s good that you care but don’t beat yourself up like this. Keep working hard and you’ll get your moment in the sun. It’s okay,” Seungcheol says, rubbing Jun on the back to comfort him.

Jun remains silent, only gesturing for the bartender to bring him another.

“Are you sure that that’s all that this is about?” Seungcheol asks tentatively. Jun’s gaze meanders down to his hand, which is griping too tightly at his empty glass. “I know that the news with the girls has …”

Jun sighs, the tension he’s holding in his shoulders relenting. Rather than anger there’s resignation. Seungcheol knew it even before he did. Seungcheol is friends with some of the Twice girls, so Jun is being insensitive in that respect, but Jun’s situation is different and he doesn’t even know where to begin with explaining it, or even if he should.

“What does it matter?” Jun says in defeat. Tzuyu is avoiding him, indefinitely, and yet… it feels like more than that. But what use would it be to admit it? To what end would it take him? It doesn’t even matter how he feels.

“I think it does matter, Jun,” Seungcheol says, fixing him with an intent look. The words are simple but they’re loaded with so much meaning beyond what’s on the surface. Seungcheol has this way of unraveling what’s going on with Jun before he can even admit it to himself.

“It can’t,” Jun says, his voice forlorn in a way that makes him feel embarrassed to show in front of Seungcheol. Seungcheol sighs heavily beside him.

“I can’t say I totally disagree with you there. Some of these circumstances are just out of our control. But if you have feelings for her—and I hate to be callous in saying it this way—it’s destructive to let it affect your work like this. Think of the team. Girls will always be there. But what we have right now… it’s tenuous.”

Jun doesn’t even bother with denying Seungcheol’s insinuation. He’s right about their groups status at the moment. Fame is a volatile thing, not to be taken for granted.

“I know. And it’s not all about that, of course. It’s not cut and dry with being frustrated about not being able to act on something,” Jun admits. “It’s the feeling of being out of control and deficient more than anything, I guess. Not just for any one thing, but for everything.”

Seungcheol nods slowly in understanding, like he’s been in Jun’s exact position before. Come to think of it, for the seven years Seungcheol spent in training, he probably has been.

“Well, ultimately we have to do the best with the what we’ve got,” Seungcheol says. “There are some things that are out of our power, but that’s life. Control is a fickle thing: an illusion, really. Let’s look at our situation and be happy for what we have. Compared to a lot of other groups, we’re doing really amazingly well. Let’s try to concentrate on that.”

Seungcheol’s right, and in saying so he makes Jun realize how petulant he’s being. He’s part of a successful group who is doing astonishingly well given how little time it’s been since they debuted and for being from a small company. Okay, so he gets one line in their single. That’s one more line than any other person with an unrealized dream of being an idol. He’s upset that he can’t see Tzuyu, but shouldn’t he be grateful that they’re even able to be friends in the first place? Shouldn’t he be empathetic to the fact that she and her group are so isolated right now, and that the rest of his group members can’t see the girls, either? He realizes how incredibly self-centered and wrapped up in his own problems he’s been these last few weeks, when there has been so much more pressure on everyone else to fulfill their duties in spite of his brooding.

He resolves instead to work harder instead of sulking, because the only way out is through.

Once back at the dorm Jun checks his phone to find a missed call and a voicemail from Tzuyu. It’s odd that she’d call in the first place, but he must not have heard it in the din of the bar earlier. He presses play then brings his phone to his ear and and her voice comes over the line.

“Hey. I know I don’t normally call. I just missed you and wondered what you were doing, I guess. Sorry we can’t hang out these days... Call me some time. Well, have a good night, then. Bye, Jun.”

Unbeknownst to him, a soft smile spreads its way across his face as he listens to it. Maybe he’ll make it through, after all.