Ask Jisun in a couple years about the moment when she knew she'd made it as an idol and she'll tell you with a pretty, practiced smile tugging on her perfectly-lined lips that it was when she held her first music show trophy in her hands.

In all actuality though, this moment comes down to Jisun squinting at her phone screen first thing in the morning two months before that, trying to decipher her newest notification. Which is courtesy of Instagram user id54399: yew row two-friend batman!! Jisun squints a little harder. Oh, it's you're a two-faced !!, with an impressive 422 likes. Huh. When she scrolls up, her latest painstakingly-angled selfie smiles back at her, blissfully unaware of the hate comments below. And well, to be fair, Jisun hadn't been crazy about that particular post either – not to a hate-level extent, but who was Jisun to speak for the public anyway?

Is this you??? is the first of around fifty messages from Jiwon on KaKaoTalk, followed by a thirty-three second video shot from what looks like outside the SBS Building. Ppl r sharing it everywhere. And Jisun's about to type no when the clip automatically plays, showing two figures, grainy from the extreme zoom – one bleach blond and the other with long dark hair – facing each other, both with their arms crossed against their chests. "You know what? Whatever!" is the only audio caught before the video blacks out, only to replay again. And again, and again, and again, and somewhere in between the fifth and sixth loop, Jisun finally registers Hmm, that sounds a little like me, and that looks like the outfit I wore last week, and –

Oh. Now she’s fully awake. Well, .

Here are two truths and one lie:

1) On the cusp of fromis_9's 1000th day anniversary, a Pann post titled IDOLS CAUGHT ARGUING OUTSIDE SBS??? goes viral, blurry fancam that some other fan edited for a clearer audio attached. Posted under a fan account for Stray Kids' Lee Know, says the original text, but who's the girl? ㅋㅋ And after another forty-eight hours, fromis_9's celebratory V LIVE to their smallest anniversary viewership to date, and an entire comment section filled with various girl group idol names, comes the most upvoted reply: It's fromis_9's Roh Jisun. Heol, my cousin who's a huge idol fan knew it was her right away ㅎㅎ, with 431 responses along the lines of wow, does she think she's relevant, picking on another idol?? and look at how uncomfortable Lee Know oppa looks ㅠㅠ this b****.

Objectively speaking, things shouldn't have blown up the way they did. Or, at least according to the four hour meeting they're subjected to by upper management after everything: "Things could also be much worse." As in, instead of their most recent music video doubling its view count on YouTube months after promotions ended, and their old title tracks climbing back up the charts, and the hundreds of hate comments popping up on Jisun's personal Instagram, their careers should've effectively been over. Other girl groups have been burned at the stake for less.

Except – and if the PR team found out, they’d probably keel over and die right there – that's not even half of it. "Look, the next time you wanna make out with someone," Jiwon hisses to her behind their manager's back once they're finally heading back to the dorm. "Can you please stop and think: hey, is this really worth it? Can't I just get the same satisfaction from kissing Jiwon instead?"

Jisun stops walking to give her her best deadpan stare. She needs to stop telling Jiwon things. Jiwon just puckers her lips like a fish and makes a kissy face back at her. Good thing their manager only seems to notice their existence again when she turns around to groan, "Can you guys please take this more seriously?" at Jisun poking a shrieking Jiwon's sides in retaliation.

2) Jisun breaks up with her first boyfriend when she goes home for Seollal. It's a quiet, one-sided kind of thing where they walk to the nearby park in the dark of night, and Jisun's debating whether or not to reach for his hand through the cold the entire time. And just when she makes contact with his fingertips, he turns to her with his mouth pressed into a solemn line and says simply, "I think we should stop seeing each other."

"Oh." The puff of breath that escapes her lips distorts his face. Suddenly Jisun can't remember why they started dating in the first place. "Okay."

He walks her home, like a good senior from her high school days – or at least before she quit to become an idol – would, and that's when Jisun notices how much his hair has grown out from that uneven buzz cut he'd had straight out from the military back when they'd met up with a group of friends during Chuseok, around when they'd started going out. She'd been so enamored with it for some reason, after being constantly surrounded by picture perfect men. And it wasn't like Jisun thought they'd amount to something when their late night meetings would usually consist of him complaining about his new fancy advertising job downtown and her trying to get him to shut up and kiss her, but she cries on and off about it for the rest of the week before moving on.

And then on her first day back at the dorm, the company removes their cell phone ban.

Looks, when you're a chess piece in the big board of the entertainment industry, get you far. "You could just stand there," Herin had sobbed into her cardigan when Jisun tried to comfort her after her elimination during Idol School, "and I could hear people fall in love with you." She thought about that when she stood on that raised platform by herself in first place at the end of it all, and after hugging and crying with the rest of the girls backstage, Jisun lay in her bed at home for the first time in months and wondered if everything came down to what people thought about her face on their TV screens, and how she was just lucky enough that they'd liked what they saw.

And looks, when you're around other young twenty-somethings whose careers depend on earning love from strangers, who haven't learned how to separate those careers from their personal lives yet, get you phone numbers, especially when their schedules happen to keep coinciding with your own.

Chaeyoung's drinking a glass of water in the kitchen the first time Jisun comes back from sneaking out of the dorm. "Couldn't sleep," she tries to lie, skirting around the creaky spot in the floorboards. "So I went to the gym."

Chaeyoung pointedly glances at her skinny jeans and the puffy scarf around her neck. "Unnie, please," she starts, rolling her eyes. Jisun opens to protest. "Your lip tint is smudged all over your face."

Jisun shields with her hands. “Is not,” she insists.

“Sure, sure,” Chaeyoung just laughs before downing the rest of her water. “Tell that to your boyfriend,” she pulls a face, “and then get back to me.”

And okay, several things: it's never really dating compared to just satisfying a physical need of intimacy that Jisun can't normally. And it's never really more than making out in secluded spots really late at night, or in the back of the last showing at a movie theater outside the crowded parts of Seoul, or, if she’s feeling risky or that pent-up, in a locked dressing room at a music show – and Jisun’s not going to name names, but that’s the one ill-timed moment one of her flings asks, “Hey, what if we went out? Like, for real?” to which she pulls away from mouthing at his neck and answers, “, I have to be on standby,” when there’s a good five performances before they’ll need her backstage and they both know that.

Luckily, he backpedals so fast that it's almost comical except Jisun’s internally freaking out. Sorry, I'm busy, she sends back the next few times he asks to meet up, and then he finally gets the message and leaves her alone. They both go out of their way to avoid eye contact if they ever run into each other at broadcasts after that.

Also: in her defense, Jisun’s not even the one to end things when it comes to her and Minho. It’d all started when they’d both guested on this cooking program that streamed online, and it took three episodes and one frantic twenty minute incident of him washing out his contact lense after she accidentally squirted chili oil into it before he asked if she’d like to exchange numbers over the hum of the basement vending machines. And then he bit his lip. And well, who was Jisun to say no to that?

The thing is, it’s supposed to end amicably. Jisun’s been good at maintaining professionalism even when she’s stuck her tongue down someone else’s throat, and she’s gotten way better at pretending that that hasn’t happened when she passes one of her past flings in the hallway at a music program. But then two years after debut, Stray Kids is one of JYP’s new golden groups winning awards at end-of-the-year shows left and right, and Jisun has to try really hard to forget that Minho cuts her off like:

“We’re going overseas tomorrow.”

Jisun turns to look at him from reapplying her lipstick in her phone’s selfie camera, the flash making her see a large green spot in the place of his face. “Okay,” she starts slowly, frowning in thought. She’s not quite sure where he’s going with this. “See you when you get back?”

Minho wrings his hands. “No.” He turns to her briefly before looking away again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

And at this point, Jisun’s gone through this similar scenario enough times to know that it’s her cue to say alright. “Oh,” comes out instead. She turns his words over and over again in her mind for a good minute. “I don’t think this was ever a good idea,” she finally settles on.

“Yeah,” he laughs humorlessly, pointedly not looking at her. “It wasn’t.” And by the time Jisun wants to ask what he means by that, she’s lying in her bed with the covers pulled up to her nose, and his number's already deleted from her phone in the heat of the moment.

So yes, Jisun recognizes that things could’ve gone better. Things as in: going in for her first meeting as a new Inkigayo host, spending hours sitting across from the PD and other staff reviewing the script with her not-technically-but-kind-of ex who, by some horrible twist of the universe, just has to be her new co-worker, and getting into a stupid argument over coordinating their schedules to rehearse their opening stage after Minho says, still pointedly not looking at her, that “our managers will take care of it.” And that argument happens right outside the parking structure, where some fan happens to get a bad quality fancam of it on their phone and – well. You know how that one goes.

3) You heard it here first: Stray Kids’ Lee Know is an awful kisser. And yeah, unfortunately for Jisun, this one’s the lie.

If caught in a scandal, Jisun remembers the staff telling them during those few, concentrated months of idol training that they got before debut, let PR handle it. And PR handles it like this:

Come Sunday morning, Jisun’s back at Inkigayo for rehearsal, scrolling through the newest comments on her Instagram while getting her makeup touched up. Why is your company lying?, reads the most liked comment, we all know it’s you ㅋㅋ. She stares at that one for a good few minutes, trying to make sense of how she feels about it. The coordi unnie looks at her with pity before slathering more concealer over her dark circles.

Also come Sunday morning, fromis_9’s last promotional single is still steadily climbing the charts, and if the public generally hates Jisun now, they make up for it by loving Gyuri twice as much after remembering how much they liked her back when she was on Produce48 two years ago. “‘Puppy eyes, you should’ve been in IZ*ONE,’” Jisun reads from a trending Pann post after they'd turned the lights off in their room. “Crying face. ‘How’d you get stuck in a group with such a instead?’”

“Stop,” Gyuri says, a smile in her voice, kicking Jisun’s mattress from her bottom bunk. “You’re making yourself miserable.”

Jisun laughs, locking her phone and resting it against her chin. “Maybe I deserve to be miserable.” And even though she doesn’t feel like crying when Gyuri starts softly, hey, Jisun-ah, she doesn’t reply to that either.

And it's not like there aren't people still supporting her. There’s an entire response post titled [enter-talk] SBS FANCAM IDOL IS NOT ROH JISUN with a whole list of reasons why the girl in the video can’t be her, a small trending hashtag on Twitter of support, and her members, whose general consensus from their attempts to comfort her about the current state of her reputation boils down to “you have the right to date but you just probably should’ve known better than arguing with your ex outside the broadcasting station. We don’t really blame you though, sounds like he acted like total .”

But there’s also the fact that Jisun has to stare down the biggest mistake of her career every Sunday until her MC contract is up and, even better, rehearse the moves to the newest Bruno Mars collab with him for their opening stage. I wish they’d made you MC instead, Jisun texts Jiwon from the bathroom during a break in between dry runs she and Minho spend trying to avoid each other’s gazes, which is mildly hilarious considering Jisun’s sat in his lap and had no problem sticking her tongue into his mouth before, and that had to be less than six months ago. She’s in the midst of coming up with a punchline for the irony of it all when Jiwon replies: and have me get in the middle of your messy break-up??? NO THNX! and then Jisun remembers as she’s examining her reflection in the mirror that no one else actually finds her jokes funny.

But despite what Jiwon thinks, it’s honestly not all that bad. The work and Jisun's humor, for that matter.

“Last rehearsal!” someone backstage shouts as they take their respective places on the set. Jisun pulls at her skirt, stealing a glance at Minho before the lights dim and like this – with his hair pushed back and a light shade of blond – he looks so different from when they were seeing each other that it’s like she never even knew him, like JYP didn’t release a well-worded statement saying some variation of Lee Know was having a conversation with a friend that was not supposed to be public, and we hope that fans will be respect his privacy in the future with the majority of his fans jumping in quickly to chorus their agreement, like the both of them don’t make an incredibly awkward bout of eye contact through their spotlights right before the music blares on and it throws Jisun a whole count off.

Or, well: it’s not supposed to be all that bad, and then the part of their routine where Minho’s meant to smile and help her down the stairs of the platform she’s standing on happens. Long story short, he flinches away like her hand’s burned him and Jisun trips over her heels and goes sprawling instead.

“Are you okay?” he asks her, his mic pack still on, echoing the words across the stage. And Jisun could say a lot of things to that. Wants to, like: No, I’m not, except some part of herself doesn’t want to admit how annoyed she is over how after basically bending over backwards to keep a lengthy distance between them, he’s suddenly right next to her, feigning concerned. Or, I’m fine, thanks, take the hand he’s holding out to help her up and suppress that irritation within herself, grit her teeth, and make it through rehearsal and filming like a true professional. Or even, Yeah, just living the dream, which is what’s technically happening, because once your group has lost momentum three years after debut, it’s a miracle if you can get it back – even at the expense of some hate comments from people who have too much time to waste on the internet – and that’s all thanks to him, right?

Except in the moment, Minho's face close to hers from where he’s crouching, that change in hairstyle and carefully tight-lined eyes aside, Jisun’s sleep-deprived mind goes back to the first time he brought his face towards hers like this before she closed her eyes and gently pressed their mouths together in a hormone-starved attempt at intimacy.

That’s – Jisun realizes as she’s ushered backstage to disinfect her scraped knees and change into a pair of high-waisted jeans which are, great, going to make her thighs look huge on TV – where it all truly takes a turn for the fingernail-pulling-ly awful.

"So," is how Hayoung puts it, pursing her lips in thought after Jisun's done, "you think your ex is hot?"

Jisun groans just as their last promotional single, on loop, begins to blare over the practice room speakers again. "Oh my god, unnie." It's managed to climb its way into the top ten on the charts in the past week, and even Jisun's brother – who barely pays any attention to idols – texts her your song is everywhere, guess i can never escape from my sister ㅋㅋ with a video of him passing five different stores in Hongdae, all playing it at the same time. "Why don't you say it a little louder, so our dance teacher knows too?"

Hayoung pushes her shoulder, laughing as Jisun gives into it, splats onto the floor, and doesn’t get up. After months of unrigorous dance training, her stamina’s dwindled into the nonexistent, and practicing for the same music shows that had cut their performances short as soon as their comeback week was over – that are giving them a whole special stage now that their song’s shot up to fame – already has Jisun’s muscles aching. “I’m just saying,” Hayoung points out through her giggles. “And I mean, what’s wrong with that? You guys dated for a reason, right?”

She shrugs. “I guess.” But actually, it’s more like this: after that four hour meeting with upper management once the scandal broke, Jisun really didn’t have the heart to look into seven pairs of bleary eyes and admit on top of all that injury that