There are two chairs vying for attention when they enter the practice room, and an eager, fresh-faced choreographer they’ve never met before.

Seulgi’s on vocal rest, throat hoarse and damaged from excessive practice and recording sessions.

(She also thinks it could be due to one too many bingsus. She’s not in any hurry to confess to that though. They just couldn't get the dessert right anywhere else and she had really missed it.)

“So, it’s gonna be like a throwback,” the choreographer is explaining in accented English, hands flying around in enthusiasm. Seulgi missed the entire first part of his monologue, daydreaming about patbingsu. “A little nostalgia, a little flirtation. A bit saucy, as much as we can get away with. The fans eat that stuff right up, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

“What I’m hearing right now is that we’re not needed here, ” Yeri says.

“Yeah, can the rest of us leave?” Joy asks.

Seulgi’s about to ask why they’re asking to be excused, when a 5-hour dance practice had clearly been penciled in on their fridge calendar in Irene's neat handwriting, and what does Joy mean by the rest of us, before she remembers that she’s supposed to be keeping quiet. She silently hopes that the situation will make itself clear.

The choreographer appears to be miffed at his grand plans being met with such cold indifference. He glances at their manager once to confirm, and then nods sharply at Wendy, Joy, and Yeri. “Yes, you three can take the rest of the day off.”

“No wandering. Strictly rest,” their manager adds.

He doesn’t address Seulgi. Or Irene.

Irene, who hasn’t spoken since she’s entered the room. Irene, who is definitely not on vocal rest.

Yeri’s already headed out, throwing a peace sign over her shoulder. “Best of luck, guys. I know you’ll kill it. Please don’t wake me up when you’re back,” she says, head swiveling in their direction once, before she disappears, leaving a swinging door in her wake.

(Oh.)

“Don’t practice too hard,” Joy says with a sweet smile, trying to hide her pleasure at getting a free evening under her sympathy for her less fortunate bandmates. “Oh, and dinner’s on me tonight, so just text me your orders before you leave, ok?” She gives Irene and Seulgi a quick hug each and practically skips out of the practice room.

(Oh no.)

Wendy’s the only one who looks as full of trepidation as Seulgi feels right now.

(A duet performance. Just Seulgi. And Irene. And the five years worth of awkwardness they’ve carefully cultivated between them.)

“You’re gonna have an easy time with these two, they’re our best,” Wendy says to the choreographer, who is beginning to get antsy at their drawn out farewells. She laughs, shrill and forced. “I promised to never touch a chair onstage after Be Natural. Unless I’m just sitting on it.”

Seulgi understands what Wendy’s trying to do, and smiles at her, grateful.

She also tries very hard not to let her panic show on her face.

(It has become a private panic now.

Seulgi keeps it leashed until she’s in the sanctuary of her duvet. She waits, unsleeping, for the quiet stillness that comes just before morning tiptoes around the corner of their street.

When the deep sounds of Wendy’s sleep-breaths carry across the room, she unchains her panic.

She feels it sniff along the length of her body, like an old pet greeting her after a long absence. She lets it claw at without leaving behind marks.

She doesn't look it in the eye. She doesn't want to give it a name.)

“I’ll see you guys back at the dorm,” Wendy says, squeezing Irene’s shoulder. Irene leans into the touch. “Don’t overwork yourselves, okay? Seulgi, don't forget, not a single word out of you.”

Seulgi makes a zipping motion in front of her lips. Wendy gives her a thumbs up, shoulders her ridiculously large bag, and walks out. Now, it's just Seulgi, Irene, their manager, and the choreographer who’s bouncing up and down with barely-repressed energy.

Irene clears to draw attention. The choreographer looks at her.

“She’s on vocal rest,” she says, pointing at Seulgi.

The guy frowns, then nods. “Okay, we can work with that.”

Then, his lips stretch smugly, like he’s going to say something really smart. “Besides, you ladies only need to talk with your body for the routine I have planned for you. It’s going to be gorgeous. Movement, motion, art!” He punctuates each word with big flourishes of his hand.

Irene rolls her eyes, and shares a look with Seulgi, like ‘Can you believe this guy?’

Seulgi musters a shaky grin in response. The panic flourishes under the spotlight of Irene's attention.

Out of habit, Seulgi begins to crack each one of her knuckles like she's attacking a group of particularly stubborn peanut shells. Satisfied, she proceeds to stretch her  back and rotate her shoulders till a series of loud pops ring in the room like gunshots. It’s as much to loosen the tension in her muscles as it is to ease the coil tightening inside her belly.

Out of habit, Irene smacks her hard in the stomach in admonition.

Seulgi gasps, then laughs soundlessly in surprise. An easy kind of joy spreads inside her like warm butter. Just like that, the unease from earlier is displaced, as if boxed out of her by the insubstantial force of Irene's punch.

“Now, if you two are done flirting, can we begin?”

Their manager lets out a loud guffaw at the choreographer’s words, which he turns into a poor imitation of a cough at the sight of twin glares pointed at him. “I'll go get some water,” he says, and escapes from the room.

Seulgi fails to stop a violent blush from rising to her face. She tries not to hide behind her hair.

“Is everyone always this unprofessional here?” Mr. Choreographer asks.

(Seulgi's sure he has introduced himself but she hadn't been paying attention and now there’s no way to ask.)

“Oh, yes, sadly. That's why we have you to lead us in the right direction,” Irene says, smile tight and saccharine.

People tend to get distracted by the prettiness of Irene's face, often missing the tone of her words or the meaning behind her eyes. Mr. Choreographer is cut from the same cloth. He forgoes his discontent in favour of an asinine smile, preening at what he takes to be a compliment.

It's Seulgi's turn to roll her eyes. She mimes gagging when he turns away to fiddle with the speaker system. Irene gifts her a genuine, indulgent smile for her efforts.

An electric guitar starts crooning in the background.

“I know you guys haven’t started recording for this track yet, but your team has assured me that it’s making the final cut for the album. It's the best choice for the teaser.”

Seulgi knows the demo well. It’s one of her favourites among the ones they have listened to. It’s in English, full of breathy innuendo. The beat is fast and unsteady, the pace more urgent in places, like she imagines a pulse would be in the thick of the actions the song lovingly describes.

She knows the Korean version will be tamer but that doesn’t particularly help her, not right now. Her body warms at the female voice huskily beckoning a lover to bed. An overwhelming shyness takes hold of her. She steals a glance at her to-be dance partner.

Irene’s nonchalance is belied by the scarlet tint of the tip of her left ear peeking through the mass of her hair, which is down in messy waves today.

“Are we going to be using those chairs?” Irene asks, voice distant. It’s a fair question, given their history of the prop.

“No,” Mr. Choreographer laughs, promptly taking a seat on one of them. “They’re for me and your manager. Where has he disappeared to?”

“He does that sometimes.”

“Abandon the people he’s supposed to watch over?”

“Yeah. It’s not like we’re rookies anymore. We only really need him when we’re out on the streets. Or deciding schedules.”

“Right, okay.” That satisfies him. Irene could probably tell him it’s suddenly summer outside and he’d take her word as gospel.

“So, are you going to show us the steps?”

The track is still playing. It has lost some of its provocativeness in the process of becoming background noise.

“Right. About that,” Mr. Choreographer begins, his fingers fluttering on the worn knees of his jeans. “I wanted to have a quick look at your chemistry, before I showed you the dance.”

“What does that mean?” Irene splutters, her carefully constructed calm beginning to splinter. “You said you had a routine planned already. We’ve been dancing together for years now. Of course we have chemistry!”

The guy steeples his fingers and rests his chin on top of the join of his hands, aiming for pensive but missing the mark, resembling a cross-eyed frog instead. “Ah, but it's crucial for me to assess it first hand. We all want the best results, don't we?” he asks, condescendingly.

“You’ve watched Be Natural.”

“Yes, yes, I have,” he dismisses her, (and Irene bristles in such a contained manner that only Seulgi is able to tell), “but that was so inauthentic. Mediocre choreography. Edited within an inch of its life, bleh!”

Seulgi shifts closer to Irene and hesitantly draws her hand into the comforting grip of her own. Irene starts, then turns to meet her eyes. They share a look. Irene turns back to Mr. Choreographer, resolute.

“What do you want us to do?”

He looks at their clasped hands for a drawn beat. “Improvise. Freestyle. Let the song dictate your moves. It shouldn’t be too hard, given your abilities. It’s only a 45 second demo, anyway. I want to get a feel of your dance auras. Just…” his smile shifts, almost grotesque in the harsh lighting of the room, “be natural!”

Seulgi's hand squeezes Irene's before she can respond with the cutting remark that Seulgi knows she is restraining behind her tight-lipped smile.

“Freestyle it is,” she says instead.

At Seulgi’s gentle ushering, they move to the center of the room, hand-in-hand.

Seulgi marvels at the warmth of Irene's skin against her palm. A buzz of anticipation spreads from the point of contact till she's thrumming, all the way down to her socked toes. She disengages from Irene's tight grip, pulls a hair band from her wrist and holds it out to Irene. Irene takes it from her with the barest brush of their fingertips, looking at Seulgi with her face open and shining with excitement.

When Irene turns away slightly to put her hair up in a ponytail, Seulgi's eyes are drawn to the line of her exposed neck, and then, to the shells of her still-pink ears. A shadow of a smile clings to the corner of Irene’s mouth, like it’s aware of Seulgi’s scrutiny but hiding the knowledge from the rest of her body.

Seulgi wonders, then turns her attention to the task at hand.

The strange man’s presence is all but forgotten.

After all, it has been a while since they've danced together. Just the two of them.

The song loops back to the beginning. The woman’s voice starts to sigh, wanting and seductive. A treacherous stage is set for the first test of their tentative companionship. A team-bonding event, of sorts. A screen test.

It’s almost absurdly comical.

Irene starts them off, languidly falling into position when the bass kicks in. She throws a charged stare over her shoulder, a challenge and an invitation.

Seulgi lets the emotion coursing through her surface, clear as day, on her face.

A supplicant before a shrine.

They fall into step like precisely engineered cogs. It’s impossible to forget years and years of long nights. The endless hours they spent perfecting the bend of a knee, the correct arch of a wrist. When they had no one but each other to stoke the hunger for success. When they were both rivals and confidants.

Some things sink into your bones and stay. Like riding a bicycle. Like learning not to drown. Their bodies line up and move apart at the cadence of their heartbeats. Where Irene is all sinuous grace, Seulgi tempers the effect with the clean edges of her motion. Irene matches the snap of her hips to the sharp angles of Seulgi’s arms, to the pointed flight of her foot. While they face their audience of one, their gazes keep flitting towards the other, like celestial objects dictated by gravity. They step around each other as naturally as breathing.

When the song gains momentum, they circle like tigers spoiling for a fight. When the beat collapses into fragments, and the singing rises, feverish, they slow down in tandem. Seulgi’s hands are around Irene’s waist, a safe inch away from the exposed skin where the hem of her shirt has ridden up. Their feet tap out slower echoes onto the wood of the dance room floor. Their faces are almost close enough for their gasps of exertion to mingle.

Seulgi ricochets off the negative space, a wave retreating from the shore after it has spent itself on the rocks.

The song ends, leaving behind curious sense of loss.

And starts playing again.

Stray, damp hairs stick to Irene’s forehead and to the slope of her shoulder. There’s sweat already cooling in the notch between her collarbones, at her temples, and in the divot above her parted mouth She’s wonderfully flushed from the exercise, breathing in short, deep inhales. She’s making a concentrated effort to not meet Seulgi’s eyes.

Even in the sterile light of the practice room, Irene is effulgent.

Seulgi fans herself by flapping her hands ridiculously. Her own cheeks are aflame, and she’s hot all over, from the activity and also not. She tries to focus instead on the disagreeable sensation of her loose t-shirt sticking to her back, slick from sweat and cold from the air conditioning.

Mr. Choreographer is squinting at them from his vantage point, perched almost at the edge of his seat. He also seems to have been filming them with his iPhone, which Seulgi doesn’t mind because she’s particular about reviewing her performances and she knows Irene is too, but she also wishes he’d asked first. It’s hard to discern his thoughts from the cloudy expression on his face.

Her heart sits heavily inside her chest, a feeling she’s come to associate with the unpleasant process of awaiting judgement.

“Bravo, that was simply brilliant. Better than I expected. You two work well together. You know, after a hiatus, one can have reservations. Of course, we’ll need polish and actual steps, which is why I'm here. There’s a long way ahead of us. Some refinement, more time spent on your footwork, and we can actually pull this off in the next 3 days.”

“Thank you,” Irene replies, stiff and formal.

Mr. Choreographer gets to his feet, stretching dramatically. Then, he says, “Okay, time for me to work my magic.”

As he demonstrates, he talks to them like they're still trainees huddling after hours in the basements, a moment away from keeling over. Jargon litters his speech, and he relishes elaborating on the technical terms he throws around.

He is, however, good at choreography despite his irritating personality. So they tolerate being talked down to, and run through the steps he shows them till they have the routine memorized.

Seulgi's jaw develops an ache from the number of times she grits her teeth during the remainder of the scheduled practice.

It’s almost midnight by the time they’re done.

They're sitting in the back of a car, their manager speeding through emptying streets towards their shared apartment, when Irene puts a hand on Seulgi's shoulder.

Seulgi blinks out the sleep from her eyes and turns towards Irene, groggy from the nap she almost stumbled into.

“Sorry for waking you,” Irene says, voice pitched low and beyond the hearing of the third person in the car.

Seulgi waits for her to continue.

“You were really good today.”

Seulgi smiles widely in response. The You too is unspoken but as obvious as the arm rest between their seats.

Irene’s eyes move from Seulgi's face back to the blurry scenery of buildings and cars and streetlights. “I've watched your concert footage, you know. Seungwan bought me the Blu-Ray of your North America tour. We used to look up your interviews on YouTube. She'd translate some of the faster bits for me. We would imitate your English accent, back when you weren’t so good at it,” she continues haltingly, in a small voice.

“You’re still improving, every single day, every performance. I don't know how you do it.” A shaky breath, like Irene's pulling words out of herself like a dentist extracting teeth. “I love watching you on stage.”

There seems to be too little air in this too big car. The windows are rolled up but Seulgi feels like wind is rushing past her ears at full force. An odd sense of vertigo threatens to overwhelm her. Although Irene is not looking at her, Seulgi nods mutely at her words.

“I don't want you to have the wrong idea. I don't resent your success, Seulgi-ah.”

Of course, Seulgi wants to say. I would never think that.

“I missed you. I was...I am angry because of it,” Irene says in the quietest voice. It's almost just an exhale against the window she's facing. “I missed dancing with you. Having you next to me.”

The words don't have an exit wound. They stay inside Seulgi like bullets she'll have to excavate later.

Irene finally looks at her, face sharp with resolve.

She says: “Maybe someday, you will be able to talk to me about this.”

She says: “And then, maybe I will be able to forgive you.”

Seulgi has never been more glad to be on vocal rest. It is evident that Irene is using her inability to respond as a buffer to get things off her chest.

Yet, the silence sits expectantly between them.

Seulgi fiddles in her bag for her phone, and clicks into her Notes app. After five seconds of furious attacks on the touch screen, she turns the rectangle of light towards Irene’s face.

Her note reads:

     a) When we get home, I will autograph your Blu-ray for you, but only if we make kimchi pancakes for breakfast tomorrow

     b) You really have been holding out on us during group rehearsals, you sneak. I thought you'd lost your touch with age!

     c) Thank you. X 5

Underneath the note, she's added a sloppy drawing of the emoji with its tongue out, cartoon bear-ears added on top of its round head.

It's inconsequential and neatly avoids the seriousness of everything that has been said. Irene's face crinkles with fondness anyway.

It starts to snow outside the car.

Later, when Seulgi is burrowed within layers of blankets and surrounded by an army of hot packs, she thinks of the cryptic curve of Irene's smile in the dance room when she'd been putting her hair up. When Seulgi had looked at her and seen a stranger.

All through dinner, the memory of it had interrupted her safe, regular thoughts, clinging to her mind like a fever. She'd watched an hour of The Amazing Race afterwards and found that she still could not banish the image of it.

John Mayer sings about gravity in her ear while Seulgi slowly falls asleep, forgetting her nightly ritual of revisiting her fear, to dream of unpainted mouths bent with the weight of promise and intrigue.