How does a human heart recover from being broken?

Or better yet, if she knew she would fall in love with her,

Would she still have done the things she did?

Sooyoung doesn’t see herself as a sinner, she sees herself as a human being who’s bound to make mistakes and learn from them, like everyone else. Something inside her, however, tells her she should have seen it coming and stopping her own desires before they got the best out of her.

Of course, being a sensitive soul and naive at the worst moments (she’s not weak, but she’s not made of stone, either) only brought her hot-blooded nature to make poor decisions. Like following her instincts and getting closer and closer to Bae Juhyun.

Somewhere after their latest activities at the time, she chasing after love would make it happen, but now she sees not all adversities can be put aside. Juhyun made the reasonable choice to set boundaries and let things clear amongst themselves, that including replying to Joy’s confession:

“I-I’m sorry, Sooyoung. I can’t do this...”

Those last words puzzled Joy for a while.

Did she mean she doesn’t want to ruin their careers or that she didn’t want her back?

Either way, it hurt the same and all Joy remembers from that night is falling asleep holding Juhyun’s hand, who was nowhere to be seen in the morning after rejecting her love.

They distanced themselves and didn’t mention what happened. Red Velvet went back to working for their next comeback and the members seemed to forget whatever weird tension was going on some months ago. Except Yeri. Yeri still kept her eyes on Joy’s reaction to every word coming out of Irene’s mouth outside of SM quarters. Or rather the lack of.

She even apologized to the tall maknae for being so brutally honest in hopes of make the two interact again, but even though Irene was actually making some effort in trying to make Joy laugh when they were out of work, Joy would just smile a little and focus on something else instead.

That’s why when Level Up Project 2 was announced they were all hyped. The energy soon got to Park Sooyoung and she was looking forward to the trip as much as the others. She would finally experience a bit of the luxury her friends did. She would finally get a chance to free her mind and body from all the stress she’s got herself into and even forget a few weeks ago she was hopelessly in love with her leader.

She went out and bought a red dress. She was ready to conquer the world again.

“Changie-ah! Songie-ah!”

The alps lady shouted to the night.

“Oh, I want to see the dogs.”

Wearing her long-sleeved dress, she ran shortly without a course before her manager unnie stopped her and sent her back to the house. The girls were already eating and Joy was the only one missing.

Inside the living room, Bae Juhyun was already eating cabbage soup, but not without asking the production the whereabouts of Joy. It was cold, they were tired, the alps lady was sick and they should be inside together, not roaming around by themselves.

“Oh, there was this bald sheep that kicked Seulgi-unnie! So funny!”

Sooyoung reminisced laughing loudly. Yerim who had to quit their daily tour due to feeling sick, so she had to settle to listen to Joy telling her exaggerated versions of what went on, which she didn’t complain about since she was quite the mocker herself.