October 2021

The y concept was officially dead. It said so on Naver.

“With the new generation of hallyu talent emerging to dominate the world, it’s time to say goodbye to groups like Sistar, Girl’s Day, AOA, and 365. In today’s Korea, groups like that just don’t make sense anymore - what a STUPID LITTLE PIECE OF -”

Kang Chaerin had the (what in her mind was) decency to put her phone aside and cover Becky’s ears with her hands, “eroony!”

Becky groaned loudly and shoved her away, straightening her blazer in an attempt to conserve some dignity. Yoonji only shrugged. “She’s kind of right, you know.”

Chaerin looked at her as if she had ripped a puppy apart with her bare hands. “Why would you take her side? She’s the enemy!”

“But she’s right. How many y girl groups have you seen these days? Girl’s Day was the last, right? They disbanded three years ago.”

“There’s AOA, I guess, but look at them.” said Minjae.

Yoonji gestured with her hand as if it proved all of her points. “y concept is dead.”

“It. Is. Not.” Chaerin said fervently. “How can you guys say that!? We’re still here!”

Yoonji, Minjae, Shiha, and Becky all looked at each other. The office space became very, very quiet.

“Chaerin… Are we though?” said Minjae.

“OF COURSE WE ARE.”

“We’ve been on hiatus since 2020.” Yoonji started carefully.

“We said it’d be just a break!”

“But then we all did our own things, right? And it’s fine. It’s been two years.”

“But that’s not the point!” Chaerin argued. “There’s a difference between us doing solo stuff and y not being a viable concept anymore. I mean Shiha, Hana, and Hyuna are all doing fine and that -” she pointed wildly at Shiha’s freshly patched job, “is y.”

Yoonji wondered if it hurt more or less than the first time. Shiha, as always, didn’t show any signs of anything being out of its perfectly manufactured place, only offering Yoonji to feel difference and see for herself - an offer she had politely declined even before it left her member’s lips. In any way, the s looked hot and impeccable.

“Yes, but Chaerin-unnie, the three of us basically have the same target audience, and we’re all sort of battling each other for sales. And you’ve seen Hana, I’m Not Cool wasn’t even that y, the song and concept were weird and kooky. It was only hot because Hana makes it so. For comparison, How's This didn't do nearly as well as Roll Deep did a few years ago.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re really struggling economically now.” Becky grumbled quietly, rolling her eyes.

Chaerin was never one to give up easily. “It’s bull though!”

“That women are no longer forced to shake their to make money for their boomer CEOs?” said Yoonji dryly.

“That women aren’t allowed to show their uality anymore!”

Becky’s eyes only returned from their previous roll before embarking on a new one. “Yeah, I don’t want to burst your little everything-is-perfect-nothing-is-ever-wrong-i’m-kang-chaerin bubble, unnie, but, like, it was never about our uality. Do you know how many girl groups are exploited for their bodies and then discarded like ing trash?”

“Not to mention those that are literally forced into ion.” added Minjae.

Becky nodded. “You have a prime example right here. Sweet, innocent public sweetheart Bae Shiha turned into a pair of for the sick entertainment of the masses. They all liked seeing her fourteen-year-old shaking legally, but they all loved fapping to it the moment it became socially acceptable.”

Shiha only smiled and scratched her head sheepishly. “If it makes you feel better, people most likely fapped to your too.”

“Yep, it makes me feel so much better. Thanks. My point is, the entertainment industry here balls. Maaaaaaaybe it got a bit better the past seven years, but honestly with how much attention kpop is getting abroad, I think it got worse. So if some creepy old CEOs think that being a cool girl crush girl sells more money than ion, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to have, yeah?”

“We’re not saying we’re in the same situation as a group like Stellar,” Minjae said as soon as Chaerin opened in what was no doubt another protest. “But the truth is none of us really chose y as our concept.”

“We could’ve!” said Chaerin.

“We might’ve,” corrected Minjae, “If we were given the chance. But we weren’t. It was decided for us by Yuri-nim and the executive board and then when the merger happened by the new people in charge. Becky was seventeen when we debuted, you have to remember that. She was barely eighteen when we did Up&Down.”

Becky nodded in agreement, “Still seventeen when we did that song about threesomes.”

“The problem here isn’t the uality, it’s the lack of choice when it comes to showing it. And many girls, when they sign their contract for the first time, they don’t get the luxury of choice.” Minjae concluded.

“Yes, but we do.” Chaerin said, “We’re not on our first contract anymore, we get to have a say in what we do! Why not do something with it!? We have to show them how 365 does it, remind them who the queens are!”

She looked so miserable right there and then, her eyes so big and glassy as if she might burst in tears at any moment now, and Yoonji’s heart broke just a little. Chaerin just fought so desperately, like a dying animal struggling to get up.

“Chaerin,” she said slowly, carefully, but it still probably came out crass. “You’re right. But that would mean renewing our contracts.”

“Yes it would!”

She looked at her pointedly, and Chaerin deflated, suddenly growing quiet. She heaved out a sigh, and Yoonji knew she hit a sore spot.

“I just can’t believe you’d give up on us so easily.” she said.

“Us?” said Becky. “Dude, there hasn’t even really been an us for two years now.”

Shiha shifted awkwardly in her seat. Yoonji only rubbed at her temples, suddenly so very tired of it all.

Minjae glared at their maknae. “Hey, no, that’s harsh and not true. We’re still 365, we can’t erase the last seven years. But it has been seven years, and we’ve all been doing our own stuff for two. It just seems like the right time to call it quits, doesn’t it? We can all focus on our pursuits properly this way. Don’t you want to spend more time at your academy?”

“I don’t understand why we can’t do both.”

“Well, I can’t tell my subscribers how ed up the industry really is while I’m still on my dungeon contract.” Becky huffed, “And that video will ing blow up when it gets out. And anyway, don’t you, like, want to marry off your boyfriend what’s-his-name? Or is it off because you cheat-”

Yoonji slapped her harshly on the back of her head. The slap rang through the otherwise silent office.

Chaerin got up and left, slamming the door after her.

“Way to go, dip.” Minjae groaned, “You just had to.”

“I didn’t say anything that everyone in the room didn’t think already!” Becky protested, glaring at Yoonji while rubbing at the back of her head. Yoonji leveled her with a challenging look.

“You don’t want this to get bad, trust me.” said Shiha. “I already went through one bad disbandment, and it’s really not fun for anybody involved. You’re the one who wants out most, Becky, you don’t want to sabotage it. Negotiations can drag out for months if Chaerin doesn’t agree with us.”

“Whatever man, I can just bail by myself.”

“But there might be some clauses in the contract about confidentiality until everything is resolved. And just in general, it’s really best if everything goes smoothly.” 

There was a hint of something in her voice, but other than the obvious regret about the way her ex-group has been handled, Yoonji couldn’t decipher the emotions behind Shiha’s facade. 

She rubbed at her temples again, and looked at her youngest member. “Would it kill you to be less of a ? She’s your elder, and she’s your member. She literally wiped vomit off of your hair for three MAMAs in a row.”

Becky didn’t seem the slightest bit remorseful. “She’s the one who put us in this situation in the first place. If she wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences, she shouldn’t have done what she did.”

Chaerin slammed the door of her apartment and immediately burst out crying.

It was an ugly sort of cry, the one that reverberated through the walls and flew right back into her ears in a cacophony of heaves, moans, and sobs. Her face was wet from tears, snot, and saliva all mixing together rather disgustingly. The concoction slid past her open mouth, and for a long moment she tasted exactly how she felt - disgusting and horrible and like something that should’ve never seen the face of the earth.

She felt like absolute . And she was, she reminded herself.

“Kang Chaerin, you-you are a piece of .” she wailed in between sobs.

It was so empty in her apartment. All cluttered and filled to the brim with color from fan gifts, thrown clothes, props and stuff for her dancing academy, and various kept memorabilia, it still felt terribly lonely and empty. Chaerin could barely contain her own presence in it, because it felt like she just shouldn’t be here. It was meant to be empty, because it was hers and her life was meant to be empty as well.

She felt up her phone in her pocket, taking it out and letting out a sob when its broken screen lit up to show the article about y concepts she had been reading before. Another sob released when she saw that Minjae, Shiha, and Yoonji all left separate messages on kakaotalk. She swiped away the notifications, knowing she didn’t deserve their concern right now. Then she backtracked, opened kakaotalk anyway, and scrolled down the chats, down down until her fingers rested on Kiyong’s smiling photo. Chaerin heaved loudly, wiping the tears with the back of her hand.

Right above Kiyong, Seokmin’s face grinned at her. His unread, “hey, I really think we should talk about it” glared red.

Chaerin threw her phone away. It bounced off her sofa and fell on the floor with a loud bang. She just stared at it, sobbing and heaving and sniffing, never feeling so much like a phone before.

“Get-get your together,” she hiccuped through her sobs, wiping at her tears again. The words rang hollow in her apartment, like they weren’t supposed to be spoken at all. Still, she continued. “You’re Kang Chaerin and Kang Chaerin does not surrender. You-you survived Kim Jisoo being a monster, you’ll survive this too.”

“So, how’d it go?” Hyukjin asked the moment Minjae entered the recording studio. 

“How do you think it went?” she retorted, shrugging off her red coat and putting it on the clothing rack. Hyukjin’s coat, she noticed dryly, lay unceremoniously on the couch.

“I think either Chaerin or Becky completely wrecked it.”

“Why just one?”

“Ouch.”

“Yes, ouch would be the right word.” sighed Minjae, sitting down next to him and taking a sip from the coffee he had ordered her (the way he always did). “I love them, but they’re both too stupid for their own good.”

“Weren’t you supposed to play negotiator? You kne