"Hey everyone!" Suyeon called out. "I just got an important email from manager-nim. Come listen."

The other members of Weki Meki clustered around Suyeon to see what was so important that she had to interrupt everything to read it to them.

"Because of the coronavirus outbreak," Suyeon read from her phone, "you are to stay in your dorm. Food will be delivered every morning - they'll knock on the door, give them a count of 10 to get away from the door before opening. If any of your members needs anything else, email me and I'll try to arrange to have it delivered. I know this is not how you'd planned on spending your spring, but this is where we are right now. This will probably last for several weeks, so do your best to get along."

"Several weeks!" Lua moaned, slumping back in her chair. "We're going to miss all of this year's cherry blossoms!" 

"I'll miss the last of this school year!" Lucy whined. "Am I going to have to take this year all over again?"

Suyeon shrugged. "I don't know. Want me to email manager-nim and ask?"

Lucy nodded. "I'll be in my bed if you need me - I'm going to go watch a movie."

"What movie?" Elly asked.

Lucy shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Kiki's Delivery Service."

"Can I come watch it with you?" Elly asked.

Lucy smiled, pleased to be getting some attention from one of her unnies. "Sure," she said. "Come on!"

After Lucy and Elly had gone, Suyeon looked around at the other members. "I don't like this any more than you do," she said, "but we've got to do our best to get through it. If you've got a problem with someone, try to work it out. If you can't work it out, come to me and I'll try to help you work it out."

"What if we have a problem with you?" Doyeon asked, an impish grin on her face.

Suyeon rolled her eyes. "If you and I can't work it out, we'll go to one of the other unnies and get her input. Why? Do you have a problem with me?"

Doyeon raised her hands defensively, as if to fend off Suyeon. "No! Not at all! I was just wondering."

"Well, if there aren't any more questions, I'm going to go get started on tonight's dinner," Suyeon said. After looking around and seeing that no one seemed to have any questions, she got up and headed for the kitchen.

"I had figured something like this was going to happen," Sei said. "I mean, we had to perform all our 'Dazzle Dazzle' promos without an audience, and the coronavirus is still out there. I just didn't expect it to last for weeks."

"The coronavirus is bad news," Rina said. "My grandfather's in the hospital with it."

Lua reached out and took Rina's hand. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "How's he doing?"

Rina sniffled and blinked back a few tears. "They think he's going to be okay," Rina said. "I just miss him so much and I wish I could go see him." The tears she'd been struggling to hold back finally broke free. Lua wrapped her arms around her and rocked her back and forth.

Sei, Yoojung, and Doyeon looked at each other, nodded silently, and left for their bedroom. They knew Rina would be embarrassed that she had cried in front of them, and they didn't want to make it worse by being there when she stopped crying.

Sei flopped down on her bed and picked up a magazine. "We've got to remember to do something nice for Lua. Rina always keeps everything bottled up inside, so who knows how long Lua's going to be out there comforting her."

Doyeon looked over a Lua's bed and shrugged. "Lua never seems to mind," she said. "She can always deal with Rina when none of us can."

Yoojung picked up her phone and started thumbing through her messages. "No, Sei's right. We should do something." She fell silent then, reading.

"Like what?" Doyeon asked. "It's not like we can go get her a coffee or take her out for ramen or any of the things we'd usually do."

Sei shrugged. "I don't know. We'll just have to be creative." She put her magazine down and looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. "Maybe we could do a makeover on her."

Doyeon shook her head. "No, that's what we'd do for you. Lua would be #nomakeup every day if she could get away with it."

Sei rolled over to face Doyeon. "Now that we're stuck in here every day, she can do that. We're not even going to get to see the food delivery person."

"We'll come up with something," Yoojung said. "Just keep it in the back of your mind: Something nice for Lua. It doesn't even have to be a big thing. Maybe just letting her have the first shower, so she can have as much hot water as she wants, or letting her watch her shows on the big TV, or. . . I don't know. We'll think of something."

Sei and Doyeon nodded in agreement. Doyeon leaned over and looked out the window. Normally she'd be seeing all sorts of people going about their daily business, but now Seoul was like a ghost town. The highways were empty, the street vendors were all home. The only people she saw were a woman jogging with her dog and a man sweeping up trash outside a store. "It's probably his store," she said to herself. "He wants to keep everything clean in case someone comes in, but he probably hasn't had any customers at all today. He probably lives with his wife in an apartment above the store, and their kids have all gone off to college." She leaned on the windowsill and sadly watched the city.

"Wow! Way to be the moodmaker, Doyeon," Sei said, as she fished around on the floor next to her bed trying to find a pen.

"I'm just saying what I see," Doyeon said. "It's not my fault the city's depressing right now."

"Well, try to make it seem less depressing," Sei said. "Who knows how long we'll be in here, and we need to keep our spirits up." Having finally found a pen, she rolled over and started taking the personality quiz in her magazine.

Doyeon got up and headed for the door. "Whatever," she said. "I'm going to go see if Suyeon needs any help in the kitchen."

A couple of minutes after Doyeon left, Sei put down her magazine, sat up, and looked at Yoojung. "Was I wrong?" she asked. "Do I need to go apologize to Doyeon?"

Yoojung finished typing the sentence she was in the middle of before responding. "You might have been a little harsh," she said. "Not exactly wrong, just didn't exactly say things in the best possible way."

Sei pondered this a moment, quirked to the side. "I'd better go talk to her," she said. "No sense starting this whole thing off with Doyeon with her feelings hurt." She put her magazine down, the quiz half-finished, and headed for the kitchen.

Yoojung looked around - she had the room to herself. She knew that with the whole group stuck in the dorm, times like this would be extremely rare. She got up, pushed all the beds against the walls, put on some music, and started dancing. She had worked out most of the steps for the song she was choreographing when she heard Suyeon call everyone for dinner. She turned off her phone and headed for the kitchen.

Rina looked around the table at her bandmates, her eyes red from all the crying she'd done before dinner. "I wish we could have had some warning before this happened, so we could have had one last day to stock up on whatever we need. I'm almost out of shampoo."

Sei nodded. "And we're almost out of all the teas."

"And gochujang, and fish sauce, and dried shrimp," Suyeon added, updating the list on her phone as everyone chimed in with what they needed. After a while, she noticed that Lucy was the only one who hadn't asked for anything. "What about you, Hyoding?" Suyeon asked. "What do you need me to add to the shopping list."

Lucy looked up, startled. "Oh, I'm fine," she said. "I don't need anything."

"Well, if you think of something, let me know before you run out," Suyeon said. "Who knows how long it's going to take Manager-nim to get us this stuff. Lots of people are probably ordered stuff, so the delivery companies will be overworked and running behind."

Lucy nodded. "Okay," she said, "but there's nothing that I need right now." She got up and put her bowl in the sink, then headed back into the living room. 

Sei watched her go, certain that something was bothering Lucy that she wasn't telling them about. Maybe she didn't need anything added to the shopping list, but she needed something. Lucy was usually one of the moodmakers in the group, and Sei could understand her being sad or upset about their situation, or could understand her putting on a false front of cheerfulness to try to avoid bringing anyone else down, but this carefully managed neutrality was totally out of character for Lucy. As she turned her attention back to her noodles, she made a mental note to try to talk to Lucy and figure out what was wrong.

"I don't think that will work," Suyeon was saying to Yoojung. "Manager-nim wouldn't want to buy us pork belly under normal circumstances. She's certainly not going to buy it for us when we're stuck in the dorm and can't work off the calories."

"I'm just saying it can't hurt to ask," Yoojung said.

"If you tell her it's a special treat to help keep up our spirits, she might say yes," Doyeon added.

Sighing with exasperation, Suyeon turned to Elly. "And I suppose you think I should ask for pork belly too?"

Elly shook her head, startled out of her reverie. "What?" she asked. "Oh, I don't know. I was just waiting for you all to finish eating so I could get started on the dishes.

"Okay," Suyeon said, shutting off her phone and sticking it in her pocket. "We'll finish the shopping list after we eat. But I still don't think the pork belly's a good idea." She returned her attention to her noodles, slurping contentedly. After a moment of disgruntled silence, Doyeon and Yoojung followed her example.

After they all finished eating, they left Elly to the dishes. As they walked out into the living room, Sei said, perhaps a little louder than was strictly necessary, "Suyeon-unnie, I need your advice about something. Do you have time to talk?"

Suyeon smiled at her. "At this point, I've got pretty much nothing but time. Why don't we go to my room - Elly's doing the dishes, so we should be able to talk privately for a little bit."

No sooner had Suyeon shut the door to her room than Sei grabbed her and kissed her ferociously. "I've been wanting to do that all day, ever since the lockdown was announced," Sei said. She went up on her tiptoes so that she was the same height as Suyeon. "Are you sure we have to keep this a secret?"

Suyeon nodded. "Absolutely. I think it's necessary for harmony in the group if we keep it a secret."

Sei pouted. "But what about Doyeon and Yoojung?"

"That's different," Suyeon said, shaking her head. "Doyeon and Yoojung have been together since I.O.I. It's not like they chose each other over the rest of us. And besides, neither of them is the leader."

"You could step down, let Elly be leader," Sei suggested, smiling hopefully.

Suyeon shook her head again. "No way. Elly wants to be leader, and that's why she shouldn't ever be - she wants the power and she'd use it. And who know if we'd like what she used it for. But anyway, I know you didn't call me in here just so we could have the same argument we've had hundreds of times already."

Sei wrapped her arms around Suyeon and kissed her gently on the lips. "No, I didn't. I mean, not just for that - I mean, I do wish we didn't have to keep us a secret. I'd love to be able to cuddle up to you when we watch movies, and to get kisses whenever I need them, and all the things and Yoojung and Doyeon can do that we can't, but this time there was something else. I'm worried about Lucy."

Suyeon nodded. "Something's definitely bothering her, beyond just finding out we're stuck here until who knows when. Do you think I should talk to her?"

Sei thought for a moment, then said "No, I probably should - a lot of times Lucy will tell me things she won't tell anyone else. I was just hoping you might have some insight into what was bothering her, so I know what I'm walking into."

Suyeon kissed Sei briefly, finishing with on her bottom lip for a second. "No," she finally said, "I've got no idea. But I just heard the water turn off in the kitchen, which means we've got about 30 seconds before Elly knocks on the door." She kissed Sei more vigorously than before, her tongue exploring the younger girl's mouth. 

Long before either of them was ready for the kiss to end, Sei pulled away, smiled sadly at Suyeon and said, "I'd better go." She opened the just as Elly was about to knock om it, and called back over her shoulder. "Thank you unnie! I feel much better now!" She turned and smiled at Suyeon, then headed for her room.

Elly came in and shut the door behind her. "What was that about?" she asked, gesturing toward the door.

Suyeon shrugged. "Sei was just feeling a little upset about the shelter in place order and needed someone to vent to."

"Better you than me," Elly said with a laugh. "I don't know how you deal with it, the maknaes running to you with their problems all times of the day and night."

Suyeon laughed. "And that's why they don't come to you! God, you are the most unsympathetic person I've ever met."

"I'm not unsympathetic," Elly said, putting her earplugs in her ears and turning on some music. "I just deal with my own problems and expect other people to deal with theirs. It's easier that way."

Suyeon shook her head as she heading out to the living room to see what the others had on TV. "Someday," she thought, "Elly's going to need someone to help with her problems, and then who will be there for her?" Of course, no sooner had she asked herself the question than Suyeon knew the answer: She would be there for Elly. She might not always like all of her members, but she was their leader and she felt responsible for them. If any of them needed help, she counldn't refuse help. She often wished she wasn't their leader - like pretty much every time she talked to Sei - but she was, and she had to deal with that. She just wished Sei didn't have to deal with it too, but if the other members knew about Suyeon and Sei, then every time Suyeon made a decision, they'd be looking for Suyeon to favor Sei, and they'd see favoritism even if it wasn't there, and it would cause so much drama in the group.  Sighing inwardly, she pasted on a smile and joined the group clustered around the television.