We can rest but it’s still too early
We need to rest but it’s still so far away
The path we must go on
Even though we can’t see the end, we must go to the end

Yeji's not sure how it all — her feelings for Ryujin — started.

She thinks, maybe, it begins when she enters the practice room for the first time, scared and trembling like a child after watching a horror movie, with her eyes fixated on the ridiculously pretty girl dancing in front of the mirror. Ryujin, who still had long dark hair instead of her well known short, slightly colorful locks, didn't even spare her a glance at first.

Yeji felt uncomfortable— terrified, even, to be trapped in the same room as the mysterious beauty for endless hours, making it impossible for her to focus on the choreography she had only two days to learn.

So it took Yeji as a surprise when, at the end of their exhausting practice routine, the girl suddenly left the room, leaving all of her belongings behind. Yeji looked back and forth between the door and the red backpack on the floor, wondering if she should let the other trainee know she forgot her stuff or if she should mind her own business.

But her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of loud steps and the vision of a sweaty girl pushing the door open with her back, tiny hands too busy holding two bottles of water to do anything else.

"Here, have this." The trainee said as she extended the bottle towards the taller girl, sounding as polite as possible, and Yeji couldn't do anything else but to accept it and take one of the bottles in her hands.

Yeji was so shocked by the act that she couldn't even bring herself to take a sip of the water, even when her dry throat kept begging for any kind of liquid to go down. The other girl, who was staring right back at Yeji's dumbfounded expression, seemed to take her silence as a chance to keep talking. "I'm sorry for not talking to you earlier, I was kind of desperate to learn this choreography."

Yeji blinked at the confession and tried not to think about the way her heart jumped inside of her chest when the trainee scratched her neck in embarrassment, looking way too adorable for her own good, a complete twist from the fierce look she had when dancing earlier that day.

"My name is Ryujin," The trainee introduced herself, exstending her free hand towards Yeji who, even with a hurricane of emotions erupting inside of her body upon meeting that girl, smiled and took Ryujin's hand on hers.

And when they ended up spending more time than they should at the company, learning more and more about each other as seconds, minutes and hours passed by, Yeji knew they would be inseparable.

She wasn't wrong. Her and Ryujin became, indeed, a inseparable duo.

The fact that Ryujin attended the same school as her was one of the factors behind their proximity. Yes, Ryujin was one year younger and because of that they weren't in the same class, but the small detail wasn't enough to distance the two girls.

They took the same bus, spent lunch time together and Yeji always waited for the younger outside of her class, enjoying the view of a focused Ryujin as she peaked through the window more than she liked to admit to herself.

And it's at school — inside of the girls bathroom, to be more exact — that it hits Yeji again, the same uneasy feeling growing inside of her chest, causing her breath to get heavier and her heartbeat to become messier.

Ryujin is close — so close that Yeji can feel the younger's breath on her cheeks, tickling her skin in an almost mocking way. She's holding the pink lipstick in one hand while the other one was resting under Yeji's jaw, so softly that it makes the taller student wonder how can something so delicate as Ryujin's touch feel so hot against her skin.

Then Ryujin's ring finger brushes gently against the top of her lips, removing the excess of lipstick left there, and Yeji wants to cry or to scream because, , her mind is such a mess and she wants to kiss Ryujin and share her lipstick with her so bad that it hurts.

It hurts because she doesn't want to push her new friend away, it hurts because anyone could come through that door and spread rumors about them, it hurts because she's afraid.

And, of course, because Yeji has no idea if Ryujin feels the same; if Ryujin was craving for her kiss as much as she was craving for hers.

The thing is, Yeji doesn't know when it started. But she's sure as hell that, after the bathroom incident, there was nothing else she wanted more than to hold Ryujin close and to know what her lips tasted like.

And even thought she didn't want anything more than that, there was something else she wanted just as much — her debut.

So she occupies herself with training. She dances, she sings and she writes a bunch of songs while she tries to act like every single one of them aren't about Ryujin until late at night. She eventually becomes friends with other trainees, spends her free time with them, laughs with them and, before she can notice, she has a new group of friends.

Yeji hopes none of the kids notice how red she gets every time Ryujin, who's also friends with all of them, comes into the room wearing black from head to toe, naturally taking a sit beside her before entwining their fingers together. Everyone knew they were close, the closest friends in the entire agency, and the way Ryujin always made sure to show how much she cherished older girl and their friendship did no good to Yeji's already sensitive heart.

It only gets worse when Ryujin cuts her hair, showing up so confident and so full of herself at the practicing room, reminding Yeji of the day she first saw the younger one, but this time she wasn't petrified because of fear — it was only and entirely because Ryujin looked breathtaking, like she came outside of her childhood fantasies of what a perfect girlfriend would look like.

Yeji even forgets she's the older one between them for a second, feeling so small and childish under Ryujin's gaze that it was hard to breathe when the girl made her way towards her frozen body, hugging the taller's waist excitedly, completely unaware of what that simple gesture was doing to Yeji's emotions.

"Did you like it?" Ryujin asked, her cute whisker dimples showing as her lips curled up, eyes glowing in expectation as she looked up at the taller girl.

"You look beautiful." Yeji said in an almost whisper, breath caught in as she felt her heartbeat ringing through her ears.

Yeji's situation only got worse when Ryujin blushed and hid her face on the crook of her neck, hot breath tickling the dancer's skin but she didn't dare to move, not when Ryujin's body felt so warm pressed against her own.

The short hair not only made Ryujin look prettier, but made her dance harder than she did before. Her steps were precise, confident, like she wanted to burn the ground she was stepping on, and it was mind blowing. Yeji had never seen someone improve so much in such a short amount of time, and she couldn't help but to be overwhelmed with pride towards the smaller girl.

If anything, Ryujin's growing passion brought them even closer than before, if that was possible. They spent countless nights stuck in the practice room coming up with new choreographies, sharpening moves and becoming skilled dancers.

The other trainees — and even the agency themselves — were blown away by their improvement, wondering how it was possible to come up with such incredible movements