The cool rays of a March sun greeted Yoonji when she opened her eyes. Yawning, she stretched and stood up from bed, almost tripping on a half-consumed bag of chips that must’ve been Chaerin’s late night snack. A glance to the side had alerted her of her roommate's absence. She must’ve slept over at Kiyong’s again, Yoonji realized with a shake of her head. That girl was digging her own grave for a , and a crappy one at that.

The living room was vacant and quiet, snoring sounds the only noise penetrating the serene morning. It had been a while since Yoonji felt so at ease in the morning, with no alarm clocks to startle her awake and no Cheolmin to hurry her into HQ to prepare for their debut. She tried to recall if Cheolmin had informed them of an off day for them to rest, but couldn’t remember the manager talking about anything of the sort. Perhaps he overslept. Yoonji wasn’t going to push her luck by questioning any of it, at least not before she had her morning coffee.

Deciding whether she should brush her teeth or have her morning coffee first was hard (personal hygiene versus her sanity, quite the tough battle), but in the end her bladder had won the war. Staggering into the bathroom, hands already at the waistband of her trainers, Yoonji came to a start.

“When did you cut your hair?”

Chaerin was in the process of examining herself in the mirror, fingers touching awkwardly at her now chin-length brown hair. “No idea! I don’t even remember cutting it! I mean, it doesn’t look bad, I look kinda badass with a bob, but they gave me those blue streaks the other day. Doesn’t make sense… Do you think they snuck in and cut it while I was asleep? Oh . Do you think it was a ghost!? Maybe -” She turned around, the words dying on her lips. “What. The. . Happened to you!?”

“What? What are you talking about -” Yoonji began, but a shiver on the mirror had caught her attention, and then she finally saw her own reflection.

What happened next would be denied by her forever.

Yoonji screamed like a little girl.

The girl standing in the mirror echoed her action. But it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. She pushed Chaerin away from the mirror, and examined what was in front of her, fingers trembling.

Same eyes, same nose, same lips. It was definitely her standing in the mirror. Only it wasn’t her. The girl in the mirror was a stick. Hollow cheeks, tiny shoulders, sticks for arms and legs… Yoonji was a shell of herself. She pushed away strands of matted brown hair (no longer pink, she noted), and pinched herself. Real. It felt real.

“You were definitely not like that when we went to sleep.” Chaerin said from behind her. “You look like you’ve been to a North Korean war camp!”

“How is that possible…” Yoonji muttered to herself.

“Is everything okay?????” The bathroom door swung open and in barged Becky and Shiha, looking dazed but alert. Their youngest swung a baseball bat in front of her as a makeshift weapon, and Shiha clutched a pair of shoes, heels first. If the situation wouldn’t have been so dire, Yoonji would’ve laughed her off.

Becky’s eyes settled on her frame, and her expression immediately shifted into puzzlement. “What the happened to you?”

“I don’t know!” Becky and Shiha looked relatively normal - other than her ash blonde hair, the Brit looked almost the same, perhaps a little… older? Yoonji couldn’t quite put a finger on it. If anything, Shiha actually looked slightly less sickly thin than she did not even 24 hours ago. Gone was the orange hair too. Just like all of them, her hairstyle has miraculously transformed during the night, and she now sported shoulder-length honey-colored hair. “High heels is the best thing you found for protection? Really? And where the hell did you get a bat?”

“You mean you don’t have one?” Becky cocked her head, eyes observing her surroundings, still unsure whether there’s a threat or not. “So, is there a murderer here or something? Or - Wait. Wait, what happened to my hair!? WHO DID THIS!?”

“Do you think it’s all a prank?” Chaerin asked, eyes focused on her reflection and fingers playing with her hair again. “Maybe PeeHee decided to pull a prank on us?”

“PeeHee?” Shiha asked.

“PP and Sunhee.” Chaerin waved her hand off as if it was common knowledge. “I keep forgetting you don’t know MBX. Ugh, it’s probably not them. They’re s but I don’t think they’ve ever pulled anything like that. Plus none of my makeup was stolen.”

The other girl shifted on her feet awkwardly. “I know Hankyung and Jonggyu.” She defended weakly.

Becky tore herself from her reflection long enough to scoff. “Oh yeah, you know that blonde dude alright.”

Shiha blinked. “Well, yeah, we’re in a sub-unit together. We’ve been promoting for a month already.”

“That’s not what I - forget it.” The maknae muttered under her breath. “Does anyone have an actual explanation for what’s going on?”

“There’s a logical explanation to our hairstyles changing overnight.” Yoonji said. “But look at me. It looks like the entertainment industry finally got me.”

The door swung open again, and a slightly disheveled, sweaty Minjae stopped in her tracks, regarding all of them with a confused look. “Why are all of you up already? It’s way too early for… What happened to all of you? And what happened to you?” The last question was directed at Yoonji specifically.

And wasn’t that the million dollar question?

Minjae’s brain was racing with a thousand different possibilities, each worse than the other. Her eyes scanned all of her group members again, taking in all of the peculiarities. Sitting in a circle around the table in their living room, it was easy to see the way Becky’s face had shed its baby fat, and how a few creases could be seen on Chaerin’s forehead in a certain light. She could see the way hints of muscles peeked from Shiha’s thin figure, and she could most certainly see the way Yoonji had seemed to shed at least five kilograms over the span of eight hours.

Even she, despite appearing the least changed out of them, looked slightly off. Her hair was a bit longer, Minjae thought, and her skin slightly more pale.

None of it made any sense.

“So,” she began, commanding everyone’s attention. “Something has obviously happened to all of us.”

“No .” she heard Becky murmur in English.

Minjae chose to ignore her. “While certain cosmetic changes could be excused as a prank, some things are pretty much bizarre.” She gestured towards their leader, who was conveniently eyeing her new thin arms with distrust. “What’s the last thing all of you remember?”

“Everything seemed fine, unnie.” Shiha was quick to supply. Weren’t they the same age? Why did she call her Unnie - eh, whatever. They had more important things to worry about. “Nothing I remember is out of the ordinary. We just wrapped our promotions yesterday, we were talking about the MBX concert and our debut. You were all already asleep when I came back…” She put a finger on her chin, brows furrowed in concentration. “Um, nothing else.”

“Yeah, nothing out of the ordinary for me either.” Yoonji commented. “Certainly no military diets that would make me become… this.” She spat, gesturing towards her body.

“Yoon, if it’s any consolation, you look really hot.” Chaerin offered, patting the leader’s shoulder.

“Hot!? I look like my soul was taken out of my body!”

“Aww, don’t be like that! Why do you always have so much trouble accepting compliments? It’s okay to admit your own worth, Lim Yoonji!”

“Chaerin this is so not the time -”

“It’s always the time -”

“Where were you this morning, by the way?” Becky asked over the bickering voices of their group mates.

“On a run, like always.” Minjae replied. She tried to recall if anything was unusual, if she had any clue about what happened, but… “Everything seemed normal… Well, my phone was bugging, but I doubt it has anything to do with that. And everything else was just your usual morning.”

“Bugging how?”

“The date was wrong, and it wouldn’t let me change it. But, I mean, that’s not the worst bug I’ve seen in a phone before.”

“What? Why wouldn’t it let you change the date?” Becky asked, hand reaching out as if to ask for permission to look at Minjae’s phone. She didn’t really like others snooping around her smartphone, but she figured letting the other Brit glance at the problem couldn’t hurt anyone. She didn’t know their maknae well enough, maybe she had a knack for problem-fixing.

She still watched like a hawk as Becky’s fingers danced on the screen. One could never be too sure. “Yeah, it usually lets you change the day and the month, but that wasn’t the problem. It’s showing the wrong year.”

“The wrong year? That’s so weird - hey, you got a message from some Hyukjin dude. Ugh, it really doesn’t let you change the year, what the . Sorry, mate, I can’t fix it. Ask Manager to replace it or something.”

“I will, but that really . I only just got a new phone, and it was doing pretty well… Wait.” The other girl’s words finally registered in Minjae’s mind, and her brain came to a halt. “Did you just I got a text from Hyukjin?”

There was only one Hyukjin that Minjae knew. And there was no ing way he had her phone number, or she had his, or that he dared to text her.

She snatched her phone from Becky, earning a hiss of disapproval from the other girl. Reluctantly, she opened the message, but not before making sure that the photo on the right corner of the screen was really of him. No longer lanky, definitely a lot more mature, but the resemblance was uncanny. It was him. The ing bastard.

The ing bastard that was oh so casually asking her over a text if she wanted coffee from the corner shop or not.

Minjae’s first instinct was to scream bloody murder, block him, and report to the nearest police station. Then, she noticed that it wasn’t the first message, only the last of many, many, way too many other messages. “What the …” the words escaped her lips before she could think. She was certain that she hadn’t talked to him in years, not since he broke her heart and left her to collect the pieces. It didn’t make sense for her to have actual conversations with him (actual, polite conversations even, she realized with horror as her eyes glided over the black text).

“Who is Hyukjin?” Shiha finally joined the conversation, tone curious to the degree that Minjae guessed overpowered the (slightly awkward and hilariously adorable) politeness she previously tried to showcase.

“Someone I’m not supposed to have casual chitchats with.” She said and closed the app without sending a reply. The white digits of the current date illuminated the screen, and she stared at them as if she could light the entire phone on fire. March 2, 2017.

None of it made sense.

Minjae couldn’t wrap her head around all of the abnormalities that were going on, and it was driving her insane. None of it just seemed possible. She remembered yesterday clearly, and in great detail. There was nothing that seemed amiss, no dark spot in her memory that would indicate any time frame where all of this nonsense could’ve taken place. Perhaps it was an hallucination? It felt real, but she has never hallucinated before and she didn’t really know what it felt like. Maybe it always felt real. Maybe she fell off her bed during the night and hit her head at night, and she’s actually in a hospital nursing a concussion. Farfetched, but still logical. A lot more logical than anything else that was rushing through her brain.

“Hey, what the !? Why does my phone say that it’s 2017!?” She could hear Chaerin complain somewhere in the room, and her head immediately whipped in the older girl’s direction.

“Did you just say 2017?”

“Yeah! Why do things like that always happen to me?” Chaerin whined as her hand desperately hit the keyboard of her phone. “Man, I never have luck with digital stuff. Why, why, why does that always happen to me, UGH.”

Minjae gave the other girls a meaningful look. Yoonji caught on first. “On it.” The el