She walked along the corridor leading to her loft. Her steps halted when she saw a figure with black padding coat sitting while hugging their knees clad in black jeans in front of her door. She stood silently there, trying to perceive who the slumbering person was.

She couldn’t take in any hint from where she stood. She for sure wasn’t expecting any guest to come by nor did she make any promise to meet anyone, so she walked closer carefully and squatted down next to the person.

She almost wheezed when she realize who it was.

“Lee Chaeyeon, wake up.” She tried to shake the girl a little.

Chaeyeon opened her eyes after a few shakes. The girl was always easy to be awakened.

“What are you doing here?” She asked the disoriented girl. Chaeyeon’s eyes were wandering around taking in her surroundings.

“Hey…” Chaeyeon was blinking her drowsiness away before their eyes met.

“Let’s get inside.” She quickly stood up, fishing out her keys.

**

“You know how much trouble you could’ve been in if it weren’t me who find you on my door?” She poured warm water to scorch the tea in two cups, stirring it later.

She heard some shuffles behind her before Chaeyeon’s muffled answer reached her ears. “Well I couldn’t reach you at all these months, what better way could I have?”

She hummed, slightly wavered at the hint of disappointment in Chaeyeon’s voice. She couldn’t banter the other girl even after she placed the tea cups on the table. Chaeyeon was huddled up in thick blankets and a change of her thick sweater on the couch (the bad result from sitting on the ground in the winter for hours), blowing hot air to warm her cold hands.

“I couldn’t keep myself awake because of the cold weather and didn’t have your keys too. Huh, I didn’t even know you’re actually living in this place now.” Sitting on the other couch didn’t shield her from Chaeyeon’s attack of guilt trip on her. The girl held her tea cup with both hands.

“I just moved in here. I also just changed my phone and I have zero contact list other than those for business purposes, really.”

Chaeyeon scowled at her. “Don’t lie. You keep in touch with Yunjin.”

“Yeah and we stopped talking after I got a new phone” She raised her eyebrows in defense.

The other girl sipped on her tea, letting the warm liquid sate her parched throat.

“How’s your business doing?” Chaeyeon then decided asking about her life would be a better topic to talk.

“It’s doing fairly good. Many people from other cities actually like the bread and are complaining about travelling too far away to eat them, so we decided to open new ones in in other cities. They’re selling just as much as the one back in Seoul.” She sipped on her warm tea, feeling it glide down her cold throat.

“That’s nice, you must’ve been busy setting them up” Chaeyeon looked at the light red liquid in her cup.

She nodded and clearly Chaeyeon couldn’t see her.

“So why are you here at this time in the night?” Chaeyeon’s feature hardened very subtly before looking up to her.

“I miss you” Their eyes met.

Her lips were parted, visibly taken aback looking at the pain reflected in Chaeyeon’s eyes.

“It’s been months since I last saw you, I miss hearing your voice too. You stopped sending me your song covers after you said you’d be busy with handling more bread.” Chaeyeon’s lips were pressed into a thin line, she could see Chaeyeon was biting on her inner lips, a tell-tale sign that she’s in distress.

Suddenly the flash of everything from her trainee life washed over her vision.

From the time she first met Chaeyeon on the first filming day of company battle performance on that one toxic program. Though, she had known the girl way before that. She had seen every video of Chaeyeon’s dancing.

How very much amazed she was looking at the girl’s dancing and singing live for the first time ever right before her eyes.

How happy she was that they both were ranked in A and got to practice the program’s theme song together. How proud she was when she got to lead the girl in singing the right technique for such a high pitched song. How honored she felt when Chaeyeon taught her in doing the right moves for the theme song evaluation video.

She totally felt like a very proud fan knowing Chaeyeon was ranked within the debuting line and was reevaluated in rank A thus claiming the title ‘Royal A Trainee’. Well, she too was a Royal A Trainee that time.

She was also hurt to see Chaeyeon losing her confidence later on in the program. She knew well enough what being ignored of her talent feel like. Pretty much that’s how she got eliminated on the second elimination.

People didn’t like her for her talent. But it’s alright, it w