In the sixth month of Wendy’s absence, she was ready. Wendy was ready to come home to a place where she thought was going to be completely different.

And it was.

After living by herself for six months without allowing herself to contact her members and check social media about them, she eventually became curious as to how they were doing again. As much as she was different from the “push-over” Wendy she was before, stronger physically and mentally, it didn’t mean she lost any ounce of love for them. The love she had for them at times, waivered, faltered, let her down, and killed her. But at the end of the day, Wendy is Wendy, and there’s no ounce of her body telling her to hate them.

She missed them, and longed to be a part of the laughter and love in her dorm with them, her friends, her family. Packing her backpack with some clothes and her hygienic items, she made sure that she had the right code for the dorm, just in case she forgot.

Wendy knew what she was going to put herself through. It was her decision to leave, and her decision to come back. Promises are meant to be kept, and she knows she didn’t want them contacting her. She knows she can’t be upset if they didn’t reach out for her this time.

She promised she would come back, and she’s about to.

“I know everything will be different, but maybe it’ll be better this way, and then I just know we’ll get back on track as a team, as a family. Ugh! I’m acting like I haven’t seen them in years! It’s only been a few months. Maybe they’ve really learned what it means to finally take care of someone, or how easy it is to lose someone. I hope that this whole experience strengthened them as much as it strengthened me.”

Being the meticulous person she was, Wendy spoke to their manager first and foremost, so she would know their schedules before trying to plan something, especially because she didn’t want a repeat of coming home to nothing at all and just the feeling of unwelcomeness that swallowed her whole, even if she didn’t know the great lengths her members went to, to go and look for her. Pushing away all the dark thoughts that began to form in her brain, she only tried to focus on how happy she would feel seeing all of them after such a long while.

“Manager Oppa said that Irene unnie and Joy have a filming together for Running Man, Seulgi has a taping for her new show, and Yeri said she was going to go out with Taeyeon unnie. Okay so this is perfect, nobody’s home at the moment, so I’ll just get to the dorm and maybe fix up some sweets or some food. I know they’ll be super surprised and excited to eat food when they come back from their schedules. I hope they’ll be as happy to see me as much as I’m happy to see them.”

Everything was supposed to be different. Everyone was supposed to be different, of course in a certain way.

Not like this.

She was supposed to come home to see Red Velvet as a whole, working together to achieve the happiness they need in their life. They should’ve been working together in order to bring out the best in each other, in order for each of them to realize how much more they need to care for each other. She was supposed to come home to surprise her Irene unnie, her best friend Ddeulgi, her two younger babies Joy and Yeri.

With her favorite backpack and her important items, Wendy set off away from her independent space and retreated back to the place she used to call home. Being that the dorm was never actually too far from the apartment, she decided to just walk. Before going straight to the dorm, she stopped over at the grocery store to buy some ingredients, just in case the dorm didn’t have everything she needed.

All Wendy could think about while walking back to the dorm was the faces of the members when they walk in the dorm, with the smell of homemade food being wafted through the entire dorm. How their faces should light up at the familiar smells of homemade dinner and dessert, the brightness that would exude from each of their faces after seeing the long lost hamster that had soon come home.

“Would they even recognize me?” Wendy thought to herself as she came close to their shared apartment. When she left them and the public eye, her hair had a blondish tone to it, her bangs covered literally her entire forehead, and she was alarmingly thin and frail. After she had gained back a healthy weight after eating right and exercising, she ditched the blonde to try something she hadn’t tried in a very long time. Shorter brown hair with her bangs all grown out and pushed to the sides of her face, allowing for her entire face to be seen. While she roamed the streets of Seoul, nobody actually realized it was her, which was a great thing, but still left her thoughts lingering about her members might not being used to seeing her or having her around anymore.  

After running up the stairs and landing in front of her home, Wendy took a deep breath to calm her beating heart, especially after how her heart had to heal physically and figuratively. One more deep breath and her hand was on the keypad of the door, typing in the code.

*Click*

“Thankfully the code h