It takes Irene six months after the onset of the symptoms to attach a diagnosis to the gradual shift in her relationship with Wendy. Six months of playful hip checks in the kitchen while cooking together, late night ice cream drives after Wendy gets her Korean license, stealing food off each other's plates to the wrinkled-nosed disgust of their bandmates, for Irene to confront the mass of emotions that has been slowly sedimenting inside her like grounds drifting to the bottom of a teacup.

Once she's identified the cause, however, she is quick to tackle this new development.

It happens on a normal day off.

They're sitting on the couch in the living room, an American rom-com playing on the TV. Wendy is in the middle of painting the big toe of Irene's left foot a delicate shade of lilac, when Irene clears softly and says:

“I like you. And I think you like me too.”

The nail brush veers violently off its course and paints a wet streak along Irene's foot. Irene giggles.

“What are you talking about? Of course we like each other. We’re friends.” Wendy keeps her eyes on her hands, which busy themselves with the task of dabbing a cotton pad with acetone. Cool fingers wrap around Irene's ankle. “Hold still.” She removes the errant nail paint with two swipes of the damp cotton.

“Best friends,” Irene adds, unable to keep herself from grinning as she decides to indulge Wendy's little charade.

“Best friends,” Wendy agrees. She starts painting the next toe, which was standing at attention next to its comrades, anxiously awaiting its turn.

“Girlfriends?”

Wendy's hand jerks again but the paint remains safely confined to the space within the borders drawn by Irene's cuticles.

She does look up at that, glaring at Irene from underneath her recently cut bangs. Her hair is dark now, and the ends of it barely reach past the tops of her shoulders.

She's lovely and Irene's heart is full with it.

“What are you guys doing?” Seulgi's voice cuts through their staring match.

Their bandmate saunters out of the room she shares with Wendy, in her Superman sleep shorts and a rumpled concert t-shirt from the time they got to see Beyoncé live. Her face is imprinted with the embroidered daisies from the blanket her mother had gifted her last Christmas. Her hair has come alive, wild and puffy due to the moisture in the air. She squints sleepily behind the wire-rimmed glasses that Irene made her buy five pairs of (two for Irene who doesn't need glasses, and three for Seulgi who does) as she takes in the scene.

Irene feels a muddled emotion struggle to rear its head inside of her. She ignores it.

“Seungwan won't agree to be my girlfriend,” Irene complains, smirking impishly.

Wendy frowns at Irene from her end of the couch, brandishing the nail brush like a wand with which she intends to curse Irene into perpetual silence.

“Girlfriend?” Mild confusion takes the place deserted by lingering sleep on Seulgi’s face. She treats this piece of news as though Irene has just informed her that they were bickering over what to order for dinner. “Well, why isn't she saying yes? Wannie, our unnie’s...a catch.”

“I heard that pause, Kang Seulgi,” Irene warns.

Seulgi smiles sheepishly at her as she waddles into the open kitchen attached to their living room. “I was trying to find a word amazing enough to describe you, Joohyunnie,” she says, voice muffled as she sticks her head inside the fridge, probably looking for her chocolate milk.

“Joohyun likes dumb jokes these days,” Wendy says, carefully. “Now, will you please stop saying stupid things so I can finish doing your nails?”

“Doesn't sound like a joke to me.” Seulgi leans over the wooden island that separates the cooking space from the living room. She sticks a straw into the carton of milk she's foraged, and noisily through it. An expression of bliss hijacks her face.

Irene smiles at her, pleased. “See, even Seulgi can see how serious I am. Stop playing coy, Seungwan-ah.”

“Even Seulgi? What is that supposed to–”

“What's gotten into the two of you?” Wendy asks, lifting Irene's feet off her lap so she can get to her feet. She wears a nervous circle on the lurid blue shag carpet Yeri had haggled for in a market in Hong Kong for a few moments, then whirls around and waves an accusatory finger at Seulgi. “Is this because of what I told you that night? I was tipsy and you said you wouldn't tell anyone!”

Seulgi raises her hands defensively. “I didn't tell her anything. She's just being weird!”

“Aha!” Irene shouts. While things are admittedly deviating from how she planned it in her head and they're all wildly off script (she hadn't even imagined Seulgi as an actor in this particular scene, a participant in their private moment), at least the pieces are finally falling into the right places. “So you do like me.”

Wendy turns around to face Irene, red in the face and eyes darting like restless fish under the surface of a still lake. “How are you being so casual about this?”

Irene hugs the cushion in her lap to her chest. She doesn't know how to answer that.

All she knows is she woke one day to the sudden realization that she's been wondering about the taste Wendy’s smile for a while now. And Irene likes to allow herself the pleasure of having the things she wants. She hoards ridiculous plushies bought at airports. Purple journals and pen stands crowd the desk next to her bed. If she passes a shop window on their way to a schedule and sees a dress she likes, she has it delivered to their dorm within the week.

She knows she wants Wendy. She wants to be wanted by Wendy.

“Why can't it be casual?” Irene asks Wendy instead.

“I’ll be in my room if you guys need me but I also want to catch up on Brooklyn 99, so please don't need me,” Seulgi says as she passes Wendy on her way back, armed with a bag of kale chips that Irene is trying to sneakily incorporate into their snacking menu. She reaches out to ruffle Wendy's hair slyly. Wendy bats her arm away.

Irene watches her go. The left leg of Seulgi's shorts has twisted and folded up around her thigh, two inches above the hem of the right leg, probably from all the tossing and turning she does in her sleep. The muscles in her calves pull her skin taut with each stride, sharply defined from long hours at the gym and dance practice.

The door closes behind Seulgi.

Wendy snaps her fingers to draw Irene's attention.

“And that is why it can't be simple,” Wendy says pointedly.

Irene doesn't follow.

Wendy takes a deep breath, like she's about to go diving for pearls, then sits down on the couch next to her, much closer than she was seated before.

“Seulgi,” Wendy says, as if she's answering a deeply existential question that Irene hasn't asked.

Fingers of fear wrap around Irene's heart and squeeze. “Do you–do you like Seulgi?” Her face starts to warm, heralding incoming embarrassment. This was something she hadn't considered while plotting out her Big Reveal and now she feels stupid. Of course, Wendy has a crush on Seulgi. Who wouldn't?

“No, not since our debut,” Wendy says, voice strained.

“You guys kissed at the Halloween party last year,” Irene says, hating the way her voice wobbles. None of this is part of the script. She forgot to account for all the variables.

“Yeah, we did kiss last Halloween,” Wendy says, losing her air of seriousness for a few moments to grin stupidly at Irene. When she stops smiling at the memory–too fondly for Irene to take it as anything but a sign of doom–and finally speaks, her tone is the one she uses when she's trying to console Irene after one of her private tantrums. “We were drunk. That one time was enough for us to know that we're just close friends who also happen to find each other attractive. It was harmless.”

The exhale of relief escapes Irene before she is even aware of it. “Then, what is the problem?” she asks, voice too loud and too shrill in the quiet of the afternoon, drowning out the car commercial playing in the background.

Wendy looks at her like Irene's thirteen years old and she's the Maths tutor who used to come around to her house and painstakingly explain the difference between differentiation and integration.

(Area versus rate of change, if she recalls correctly.)

“Are you serious?”

“I don't understand what you're trying to say, Seungwan. What does Seulgi have to do with us?”

Wendy sighs, then pinches the bridge of her nose. Irene recognizes the exasperation in the slouch of her shoulders and feels more lost than ever. She's just bared her heart to her best friend but it seems more like she's unwittingly stepped into a convoluted game of tennis instead.

“I like you, so much,” Irene tries again, beseeching and placating at the same time. She puts a hand on Wendy's knee and tries to contain the sharp elation that rises in her chest when Wendy doesn't shy away from the touch. “I loved you already, as a friend. You take care of me and you make me laugh and you're just–perfect. Now, I have all these romantic feelings for you. I don't know what to do. I thought you felt the same way.”

Wendy takes a deep breath, then moves her hand away to look her in the eyes. “I do feel the same way, Joohyun. Maybe even more.”

“If you're worried about what the other girls will say–”

“I’m not,” Wendy cuts her off. “Seulgi already knows. I told her like a week ago. I was hung up on you, too. Obviously, I couldn't talk to you about it and I had to talk to someone. My guess is that Sooyoung and Yerim probably have an idea as well.”

Irene blinks slowly. The situation seems to be resolving itself yet she can't help but feel like she's missing something. The awkwardness that has wedged itself between them is still solid and immovable. She scoots along the couch till her side is pressed up against Wendy's, and loops her arm through Wendy’s. She takes one small hand between both of hers. Their fingers tangle together automatically.

“Seungwan,” Irene breathes out, looking up through her lashes. She knows the effect it has on people and isn't above using it on her dearest friend. “Do you wanna go out with me? Next Friday, when we have the day off. We can do dinner at that new Italian place. Not as friends.”

Wendy’s gaze has slid down to Irene’s lips. She is a willing quarry, ensnared. “Okay,” she says, eyes almost unfocused, the words almost automatic.

Irene beams, almost pressing a kiss against the pouty bow of Wendy's mouth in joy before she reigns in the urge.

It can wait for after their first date.

“You look really nice.”

Irene is drinking a glass of water in front of the refrigerator, looking at a watercolour of a dawn soaked beach Seulgi has fixed there with airplane-shaped magnets. The artistic signature (different from Seulgi's cutesy autograph signature) is a smudge at the bottom. She turns around mid-swallow at the voice behind her. The skirt of her black dress flares with the movement, then settles along her legs, falling mid-thigh.

“That's Seulgi's, isn't it?” Irene asks before she thinks of doing something more appropriate, like saying thank you, or smiling demurely, or returning the compliment.

(In her defence, Seulgi was at the front of her mind.)

Wendy's wearing a navy silk shirt, a gorgeous shade that reminds Irene of the darkening sky just after sunset. She loves it, had insisted that Seulgi buy it when they'd visited the Burberry store together a few months ago.

A loud huff from Wendy’s mouth stirs her curled bangs as she rolls her eyes. “She made me change my outfit five times before she threw this shirt at my face. She said she hasn’t had the chance to wear it yet. Also, that she’ll kill me if I spill anything on it, as if I’m the one who goes around spilling food!”

Wendy’s hair is in loose waves, a hint of rouge on her pale cheeks. She’s put on a shade of lipstick darker than the one she usually prefers; Irene can see the teeth-marks where she’s worried her lip. Affection swells in her heart, like applause at the end of one of their performances.

“She didn’t have to worry. You look pretty,” Irene says, walking towards Wendy. She reaches around to set her empty glass in the sink, and feels Wendy shiver at the proximity. Something like giddiness, laced with a generous dose of nerves, shoots through her veins at the reaction. At the thought the cut runs deep on both sides, that she's not the only one afflicted. She doesn’t move away, choosing to gently trace the soft material running along Wendy’s forearm. “You always look pretty,” she adds, soft like a confession.

“When did you get so flirty?” Wendy laughs, flustered. A faint blush has settled on the bridge of her nose. “Save it for the actual date.”

“There’s more where that came from,” Irene assures, flashing a cheeky grin. On a whim, she fixes the collar of Wendy’s shirt, smoothing it down around her neck, a gesture that they both know is unnecessary but not unwelcome. “Let’s go. Manager oppa’s been texting me impatiently for the past fifteen minutes.”

Their romance progresses as smoothly as the course Irene had charted in her head during the nights she lay awake and alone in her small double-bed, staring at the wall next to it that she shared with Seulgi and Wendy.

Sometimes sounds would float through the wall: thumping bass from Seulgi's Bose speakers, frequent muffled shrieks of laughter, raised voices during the occasional squabble, and once, a loud thud that had sent vibrations through the wood and plaster, which turned out to be Seulgi falling over while trying a handstand on a dare.

Not much changes in their easy relationship. There's a sharp increase in the lingering touches, of the friendly as well as the more-than-friendly kind. Their initial fancy dates devolve into free afternoons spent baking together, and movie marathons in Irene's room with the Wendy's fairy lights creating a wreath of glittering stars around them.

Soon, Wendy drops all pretense of still rooming with Seulgi. Irene welcomes the invasion of her privacy with open arms and a new toothbrush. It's not like they haven't shared rooms before but something feels oddly momentous about this change.

They don't know then, of course, that the room switch bookmarks the beginning of The Middle.

(At that time, it had felt more like The End.)

Seulgi’s presence at the dorm tapers down from the occasional but regular sighting to a rare occurrence. The rest of the girls are too caught up in their own personal bubbles to attach any significance to it. After all, break time is a gift horse they have learnt not to look in the mouth, and they prefer to spend it apart from each other; being around someone constantly can become abrasive even for the closest of friends.

So, when Yeri poses a question to Irene on a random afternoon, Irene doesn't think much of it.

“When was the last time you saw Seulgi unnie?”

Irene takes a long sip from her glass of mango juice before answering. “I think last Monday? She had that Adidas photoshoot. I saw her leaving for it when I was fixing up breakfast.” She tilts the glass to tip the residue of the juice into her waiting mouth. She savors the pulpy bits like hard candy before she swallows.

They're spending the afternoon catching up on months worth of a new Korean drama. Wendy is in their room, an hour deep into a long overdue Skype session with her parents and sister. Joy is out meeting old friends. Irene doesn't know where Seulgi is.

“Aren't you worried?”

“Worried? No.” A pause, as she deliberates. “Should I be?”

Through her peripheral vision, Irene catches Yeri stiffening. It's a telltale sign for anyone who's grown up with siblings—the standard deer-in-headlights look that takes over one’s face when they accidentally reveal too much to a parent in conversation.

“What is it, Yerim?” she presses. They'll have to rewatch the episode, because Irene has completely turned her body towards Yeri. She knows that none of her bandmates can lie effectively to her when she targets the full force of her attention on them like the stereotypical lone bulb over an interrogation table.

Yeri tries to hide her nervous squirm by shifting along the couch to lie half-down along its length, putting her feet in Irene's lap. “I was just asking. It feels like ages since I've played video games with her.” Her tone is overtly casual.

Irene narrows her eyes, not gullible enough to take the response as the entire truth. “Seulgi's been busy. We all have been.”

There is substance to that statement, regardless of whatever Yeri's trying to hint at. Rumors of an upcoming girl group debut under their company has kept them all on edge, the tension growing the longer their rest period is left uninterrupted. The ranks of talented trainees waiting in the wings has only grown over time, and at this point it is a ticking time bomb minutes away from detonating. The flurry of solo activities filling up the slots in their schedules only made the edge of unease keener. Easier to fall off of.

Perhaps that is what Yeri is trying to convey, through her half-truths and abortive warnings. That Seulgi is one step away from a stumble. As the leader, it is Irene's job to know these things. To keep a check on growing feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, or otherwise, in her members. She hasn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, but maybe she hasn't been looking hard enough; her burgeoning romantic life could have made her remiss in her duties, could have made her vision tunnel to sunlit moments spent trading lazy kisses with her girlfriend. Everything else in between shrunk to minutiae.

She's about to continue her line of questioning when they hear the key turning in the lock of the front door. It could be Joy, returning from lunch with her school friends.

It's not Joy.

It's Seulgi, squinting into the cozy gloom of the living room. She’s in her grey hoodie, a Niké cap, and wrinkled sweatpants. A messy ponytail with stray hairs spiraling out from the hair-tie dangles in front of her right shoulder. She looks like she hasn't slept in over a week, which is absurd because Irene knows she's had a chiefly free week.

(Recently unearthed insecurities notwithstanding, Irene is fairly confident in her knowledge of her bandmates’ professional engagements.)

“Hi guys, what's up?” Seulgi greets them. Her voice is fraying at the edges.

Yeri glances at Irene with a remarkable intensity, as if silently requesting her to not address Seulgi. She responds with a tone that's in complete contrast to the look on her face, “Hey, Seulgi! I have a new game I wanted to show you. Do you wanna play together after Joohyun unnie and I finish watching TV?”

Irene watches with furrowed brows as Seulgi sighs, long and drawn. “Maybe not today. I’m really beat. I think I’ll sleep until dinner.” The ends of her words mingle with the beginnings in her haste and obvious tiredness.

“Where were you? Why do you look as exhausted as we are in the middle of a comeback?” Irene asks. She doesn't mean for it to come out sharp and confrontational but it does.

Seulgi's in the middle of pulling off her sneakers–laces still tied despite the number of times Irene's told her to stop doing that–and she almost falls over at the unintentional belligerence in Irene's voice.

“I was with Sunmi. We were hanging out, the usual, and got carried away. You know how it is. I guess I forgot to…well, sleep properly.” It's a flimsy explanation. Seulgi finishes putting away her shoes in the rack next to the door, then walks over to the couch, dusting her hands on her pants. “You really didn't notice that I’ve been staying over at hers for the past few days?” It's more a statement than question.

“I’m not your babysitter,” Irene says, a sudden rage rising in her and spilling over to tinge her words.

Seulgi’s eyes widen at that. She opens to respond, then just shakes her head as if dissuading herself from investing herself in a lost cause. Instead, she yawns and knuckles at bags under her eyes.

(The anger inside Irene stretches its elbows, and settles along her ribcage, filling up her chest.)

“See you at dinner, Yerim-ie. Maybe if I feel up to it we can play your new game afterwards.” Seulgi throws her cap at Yeri with a weary smile, who catches it with a mollifying smile in response. She disappears into her room without a further word to Irene.

“What's wrong with her?” Irene asks aloud, to Yeri, to the ignored television that's moved onto the next episode, and to the empty glasses on the coffee table. She feels equally bewildered and furious. The fact that these emotions are flooding her without her permission, unchecked, fuels her irrational annoyance. It’s a vicious circle.

“That was a bit harsh, unnie,” Yeri says simply. She shifts her toes along the cotton edge of Irene's shorts, getting comfortable again. “You know you've been a bit absent, lately. Seulgi's just tired. I'm sure she didn't mean to make you angry.”

“How am I supposed to keep tabs on her if she doesn't tell me anything?”

Yeri shrugs. “Just talk to her once in a while? Or ask Seungwan-unnie. That would probably be easier for you.” She turns her face sideways, hair splaying messily and bunching up against the cushion she's resting her head on. The flickering light from the TV lends an unnatural sobriety to her features. An electric prophet. “You should do it sooner rather than later, though.”

Irene forgets to take her advice.

Two weeks later, their management calls them in to inform them of their plans of a hiatus for Red Velvet.

Seulgi announces that she's signed on to be the opening act for the US leg of Sunmi's American tour. That she's leaving within the end of next month. That they have a duet slated for release in a week. And that Seulgi's aiming to get her own solo album out before the end of the year.

Irene's not surprised by the fact that she’s the only one surprised.

She nurtures the heady mix of shock and betrayal over the next five years. She waters it with fresh disappointment, with each day that passes without a direct text or call from Seulgi. She lets it bloom under the gentle shade of her ego.

The er punch of Seulgi's physical departure from their lives makes a keen observer of her (she had, after all, missed all the signs) and she sees the break up with Wendy coming from a mile away.

It happens when they're just shy of their third anniversary, borne mainly out of Irene's envy for the bond that Wendy and Seulgi carry through the years, how it deepens despite the infrequency of their correspondence. How neatly it alienates her from their world of secrets, of inside jokes, and of long late night video calls.

(Once, Irene acts out after a bad bout of brooding.

She asks Wendy if Seulgi had started freezing Irene out because of their relationship, if her radio silence was a result of jealousy. She asks whether she'd been mistaken when she'd confessed her feelings to Wendy, whether it was actually Seulgi who had been secretly harbouring romantic feelings for Wendy, instead of the other way around.

Wendy just looks at her like she's grown another head and laughs her concerns away.

Irene abandons that theory, but something about the alarm in Wendy's eyes stays with her long after that fight, buried in the recesses of her mind like a seed waiting for water.)

The petty spats (more often Irene's fault than not) eventually erode all vestiges of romance that they try to sustain, until they decide that an amicable breakup is better than turning from best friends into bitter exes.

Over the years that follow, she meets her bandmates for coffee, for lunches, for drinks. She smiles vacantly whenever they discuss the missing member, trading tidbits about Seulgi's personal life, laughing at the silly tour photos she occasionally sends in the Red Velvet group chat, at the idea of their very own Kang Seulgi slowly evolving into an American popstar.

She pretends that she's not aware of the fact that they try to curtail these discussions in her presence, that the topic gets brought back up whenever Irene excuses herself to take a phone call or go to the bathroom. She starts offering to get a round of drinks from the bar more often.

She pretends that she's not constantly worrying at the wound that resembles the crescent of Seulgi's smile, like she used to tongue the gap left behind by a tooth in her childhood.

She pretends that she does not relish the pain.