Nayeon is smack-dab in the middle of practicing her high notes backstage when he enters the room.

Accented Korean catches her attention, and she sees Jun and Minghao saying hi to Tzuyu, along with a few of Seventeen’s other members. Jihyo and Chaeyoung both move to greet the other members, and through the crowd her focus is lasered onto a boy with auburn hair.

He’s bowing and smiling at Tzuyu, and Nayeon bows towards them all and then forces herself to break her attention from them because he makes her breath catch in a dangerous way, so she buries her focus back into her sheet music, practicing her parts.

“Nayeon-unnie!” Jihyo pulls her by the arm, breaking Nayeon’s concentration yet again. “Come meet Seventeen-sunbaenims. Jungyeon, you too!”

Nayeon has met a few of the members previously, but the sheer volume of all thirteen of them in total is overwhelming. She’s meeting boys with large eyes and wide smiles, until she is bowing and shaking hands with him.

“Annyeonghaseyo,” he bows to her, words plateauing at the end in a dead-giveaway American accent. “I’m Joshua.”

“I’m Nayeon,” she responds, blushing wildly and hoping that her makeup is enough to cover it. She’s reached the end of the line now, no more members to greet, and she seems to realize it at the same moment that he does.

“How old are you?” Nayeon asks, mindful of her speech.

“Born in ’95. And you?”

“Same,” Nayeon grins, lighting up. He smiles too, his wide eyes pressing into crescents. Gosh, he is beautiful, she thinks.

“Who’s this, Jisoo-yah?” A boy with long, silvery hair links his arm with Joshua’s, looking Nayeon up and down. If he were a girl Nayeon would think him rather pretty, with his perfect bone structure and straight white teeth.

“This is Nayeon. She’s the same age as us,” Joshua replies. “Nayeon, this is Jeonghan.”

They both bow, exchanging greetings.

“I’m sorry, but… Jisoo?” Nayeon directs her speech to Joshua, who laughs softly. Everything about him seems gentle, from his voice to his mannerisms and the way a kindness seems to emanate from him.

“It’s my Korean name. Joshua is my stage name, but I grew up in the US and went by Joshua since I was a kid, so I’m used to it.”

A boy with huge eyes and dark hair squishes in next to Jeonghan. Jeez, these boys are touchy, Nayeon thinks.

“And who could forget out leader!” Joshua says, clapping hands and chest bumping with the new arrival. “Nayeon, this is Seungcheol.”

“S.Coups,” he bows to her, and Nayeon bows back.

“Look at this, we’re all the same age,” Jeonghan says, gesturing back and forth between them, and Nayeon smiles graciously.

“So we should all be friends, I expect?” Seungcheol says. They all nod in agreement and Nayeon has to refrain from laughing at how much the boys all look like bobbleheads.

“So you’re the oldest, but isn’t Jihyo the leader…?” Jeonghan inquires. Nayeon gets the feeling that he’s not one to shy away from provocative subjects.

“She is. I’m the oldest, but Jihyo-yah trained for the longest.” Nayeon replies, chagrined at the topic. The number of times she’s had to and will continue to have to explain this is reaching the point of annoyance.

“Our Seungcheol-ah is both,” Jeonghan volunteers, nudging Seungcheol forward. The way Seungcheol is looking at her, so transfixed with his wide eyes, is unnerving.

“You said you were from the US?” Nayeon diverts the topic back to Joshua. Seungcheol’s expression falters the tiniest bit when she does. She knows that the time they’ll spend in one another’s proximity is ticking down, and she can kick herself later for being less-than-subtle. At least she tried. Nayeon is nothing if not ambitious.

“Yes, I came to Korea when I was 18,” Joshua responds.

Nayeon realizes she is asking him basic interview questions and scrambles for something interesting or original, but suddenly the boys’ manager is herding them out of the room.

“Nice to meet you, Nayeon,” Joshua says, and Jeonghan and Seungcheol echo the sentiment.

“We’ll see you around,” Seungcheol says, waving goodbye as they leave the room. Nayeon waves with a half-smile after them. She definitely hopes that they will.

Nayeon picks up her phone every minute for 15 consecutive minutes, pressing the button to light up the screen just in case she missed a message.

She’s been waiting at the café for Joshua, Jeonghan and Seungcheol to show up. They’re same-aged friends so Nayeon invited them all, but she’s got an agenda for today, for sure.

She jumps every time the bell tinkles at the door, slumping back in disappointment with each new customer. She swirls her straw in her Americano impatiently. Of course they’re late.

“Nayeon-ah!” they greet her like a wave. Somehow only three of them feels like so few after seeing the whole group.

They move to order and Nayeon not so subtly whines that they just got here and they’re late and so they shouldn’t leave her alone, and so Joshua sits with her while the others order for him, and she can barely suppress her elation.

“Oh, here,” he takes off his coat and drapes it over her bare legs. Nayeon feels frozen up, like she can barely move, at the gesture, at his proximity, and the concerned look he fixes on her as he adjusts the jacket on her legs.

“Thanks,” she says barely above a whisper, her attention still fixed on him for a beat too long when Jeonghan and Seungcheol return. She drags her eyes away because she abhors others knowing her intentions before she’s ready to reveal them.

Seungcheol’s the only one who shows up on the trail that Nayeon invited the lot of them to for a hike. He pulls her into a hug, which she returns stiffly.

Joshua and Jeonghan are in vocal practice, but Seungcheol’s available, and so she shows up because she did invite him, after all. Never mind that it was all a ruse to see Joshua. Never mind that Seungcheol still makes her uncomfortable.

Seungcheol and Nayeon ascend the trail in a quietness punctuated by Seungcheol’s stories of what he’s done the last few weeks, and Nayeon hums along, making noises of understanding and asking the bare minimum to get him to continue.

“Nayeon, why did you invite me here?” he stops on the path. She takes a few paces before she realizes that he’s stopped, turning to face him. Seungcheol has this perplexed, empty look, and if she were a better person then she’d want to fill it up. But she has to talk to too many people these days for her to be sincere to all of them, or else she’d drain herself entirely.

“Sorry, Seungcheol, it’s nothing personal. My mind is just prone to wandering these days.”

He sees through her, but he knows that his disappointment is disproportional to the situation, so he stays mum.

“How close are you to Joshua?” she asks after some time, but not long enough for him to know what she truly wants, and why he’s here.

“We’ve known one another for 4 years, so we’re pretty close,” he responds, yanking a twig from a tree branch as they pass. Hopefully it’ll seem random and intentionless. Nayeon's too wrapped up in her own head to notice, besides. “Why does it matter to you?” His words have a hint of prickle to them. That, she does notice.

Nayeon looks away to hide her grimace.

“I just wondered. Nothing much.” She replies evasively, kicking a pinecone as they walk up the trail.

“You interested in him, Nayeon-ah?” he asks.

“Don’t say crazy things, Seungcheol,” she replies sharply—too defensively, Seungcheol thinks—her eyes fixed on the woods before them. “I can’t be.”

“Hello~,” she sing-songs, pushing open the door to their waiting room.

Many boys greet her, with Nayeon-ah! and Nayeon-noona, how are you?

She responds politely, delicately, until she hears what she’s been hoping for. What she’d come here to receive.

“Hi, Nayeon,” he says, hair falling into his eyes, which are wide and crinkling like always.

“Hi Joshua,” she replies, her voice as much stronger than a breathy whisper as she can manage, which isn’t much.

“It’s been too long,” he says, rubbing her shoulder with a little smile spread across his face. She feels replete, like her mission for coming here was requited, while in the back of her mind realizing how pathetic that must be.

“You’ve got something here,” Joshua says, removing a tiny scrap of paper from her hair; while he touches her the proximity steals Nayeon’s breath.

“Nayeon-ah!”

More arms are around her. Seungcheol and Jeonghan. She hopes she hadn’t been too obvious last time. She wills even stronger than Seungcheol hasn’t said anything. She doesn’t know if she could trust him and yet she had, but the uncomplicated way that Joshua and Jeonghan are grinning at her makes her think Seungcheol hasn’t compromised that.