Suyeon and Elly were just finishing another historical drama when they noticed Yoojung at the end of the couch. She was wrapped in her blanket and carrying her pillow. 

"Hi unnies," she said. "Can you get off the couch soon? I'm tired and want to get to sleep."

"Can't you sleep in your bed?" Suyeon asked.

Yoojung shook her head. "I can't be around Doyeon like that. I mean, we talked some today and things are better, but they're still not good, you know?"

Suyeon nodded. "Okay," she said, "well, as luck would have it, we just finished our movie, so the couch is yours."

Suyeon and Elly got up and headed toward their room. 

"I'll try to not to wake you up when I bring in the groceries," Suyeon said.

Yoojung yawned and fluffed her pillow. "As tired as I am right now, I don't think you could wake me up if you brought in the groceries with an elephant." She curled up under her blanket and closed her eyes.

Onec they were back in their room with the door shut behind them, Suyeon turned to Elly. "We've got to get Yoojung and Doyeon back together," she said.

Elly rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, because the maknaes meddling in our love lives was wanted and worked out so well."

"It's not all bad, is it?" Suyeon asked with a mischievous wink.

Elly couldn't help but laugh at this. "Okay," she said when she finally stopped laughing. "Even if we assume that you're right - and I'm not saying I necessarily am - what do we do?"

Suyeon sat down on her bed and looked defeated. "I don't know. This afternoon it looked like Yoojung would be the obstacle to them getting back together, but tonight it looks like Doyeon's the obstacle."

Elly sat down on her bed, across from Suyeon. "So we tackle this problem from both ends."

"What do you mean?" Suyeon asked, looking confused.

"Tomorrow morning, you'll go talk to Yoojung and see what needs to happen from her point of view for them to be able to get back together. I'll be doing the same thing with Doyeon. Then we'll swap: You'll use what you learned from Yoojung to try to convince Doyeon that they should get them back together, and I'll be doing the same thing with Yoojung."

Suyeon's eyes lit up. "That's a brilliant idea!" She sat quietly for a moment. "You know, sometimes I almost wish we actually were dating."

Elly looked quizzically at Suyeon, one eyebrow cocked up. "I didn't think I was your type?"

Suyeon looked bewildered at this concept. "Not my type? Who do you think is my type, then?"

Elly leaned back on her elbows, a playful smile on her lips. "Oh. . . I don't know. . . I would think someone more like. . . Sei?"

Suyeon scoffed. "Don't even get me started on Sei," she said, waving dismissively. "I mean, she supposedly had a crush on me for months, but now all of a sudden she's dating Lucy? What's up with that?"

"Well," Elly asked, "did you ever give her any encouragement?"

Suyeon flopped down on her pillow. "No, I didn't." She rolled over to face Elly. "I mean, how could I? If I was dating one of the members, then the others would accuse me of favoritism any time I made a decision that affected them."

Elly shrugged. "I think you're underestimating our members. I mean, right now you're dating me and no one's complaining about anything like that."

Suyeon made a show of looking around the room. "But, you know, these aren't exactly typical circumstances." She rolled over to face away from Elly. "I don't want to talk about this anymore," she said. "We've got enough on our plates trying to deal with Doyeon and Yoojung. Sei's apparently happy with Lucy, and I'm glad she's happy."

Elly laid back and closed her eyes. "Looks like I touched a nerve," she thought.

The next morning, Suyeon got up to wait for the grocery delivery only to discover that Yoojung was already in the kitchen. "Couldn't sleep?" she asked.

Yoojung shook her head. "I kept waking up, and each time I woke up, I couldn't stop thinking about Doyeon."

Suyeon sat down across the table from Yoojung. "So you want to get back together with her?"

Yoojung nodded. "More than anything. But I don't know if she wants to get back together with me."

"There's only one way to find out," Suyeon said. 

Yoojung sat silent for a long moment. "I just don't know what to say." She reached out and clasped Suyeon's hand in both of hers. "Unnie, would you talk to her for me?"

Suyeon pretended to look surprised at this idea. "Me? What would I say?"

"Oh, you know," Yoojung said, waving dismissively, "how I'm miserable without her and I'm sorry for the things I said and I want to try again."

Suyeon shook her head. "I don't know if it's that simple. I mean, there must be some sort of problems between the two of you or else you wouldn't have split up. If you don't deal with those problems, you're just going to split up again the next time one of you gets upset." 

"But I think it'd be easier to work through the problems if we were together," Yoojung said.

"Some people might say you've got the order of things kind of backward," Suyeon said. "But not to worry, I'll talk to Doyeon and see what she has to say."

Just then they heard the sound of the groceries being dropped off outside the door. After a slow count of 10, Suyeon got up and brought in the grocery bags.

"Anything exciting today?" Yoojung asked.

"There shouldn't be," Suyeon said. "I didn't request anything exciting. Instant noodles, tangerines, tea, tuna. . ."

Yoojung laughed. "Apparently most of our diet is 'things that start with t'."

Suyeon agreed. "We should look over the grocery store's website today to see what they've got that we haven't been getting, maybe get some variety in our lives."

They batted food ideas back and forth as Suyeon put away the groceries. Most of the things they thought of were either too expensive, too difficult to cook, or just something Manager-nim wouldn't go for, but from time to time Suyeon would stop and add something to the list on her phone. "The fake crab legs are a good idea," Suyeon said, "we can present it to Manager-nim as 'look how much money we're saving compared to real crab,' but they still taste good."

"You know what I miss most?" Yoojung asked. "Coffee. I wish Manager-nim hadn't rejected our request for a coffee machine. When they let us out of here, I'm heading straight for the nearest coffee shop for a large iced Americano with whipped cream and soy sauce caramel."

"That does sounds good," Suyeon agreed. "I want to go out for pizza. Pepperoni and sausage."

They spent the next hour talking about different foods they missed from the outside world. Suyeon hoped she could get the conversation back around to Doyeon, but the opportunity never presented itself, and at any rate, a happy Yoojung was preferable to a depressed one. Once the sun was up, the other members began trickling in and fixing themselves breakfast. Suyeon saw Doyeon slip in, grab a tangerine, and slip back out. She put her teacup in the sink and followed Doyeon back to her room.

Afternoon was nearing its end on what was turning out to be Suyeon and Elly's most frustrating day in Weki Meki. Basically, it all boiled down to Doyeon and Yoojung each wanted an apology from the other, and neither one felt that they had done anything that they needed to apologize for. Suyeon and Elly had each talked to each of them several times, to the degree that the other members had figured out what was going on and were watching to see how things turned out. After one particularly fruitless round of negotiation, Suyeon had finally had enough. Stalking into the middle of the common room, she cupped her hands to and yelled "Weki Meki! Band meeting! Common room! NOW!"

The members all rushed in - they knew that it took a lot to get Suyeon angry, but once she was angry, she was a force of nature, not to be resisted. Once everyone had assembled, Suyeon stalked back and forth at the front of the room, glaring at all of them. Finally, she stopped, turned to all of them, and began speaking in a quiet, angry voice. "I know for certain that I've talked to every single damn one of you about what a bad idea it is to date another member of the group. But I always said I couldn't stop you. All I asked was that your dating not affect the rest of the group. But now it's started to affect the rest of the group, so here we are."

She stalked back and forth again, as if daring anyone to speak up. "First of all, for those of you who were trying to get me and Elly together, that was sweet, but it was totally unwanted and unneccesary. I mean, come on, Elly and I are roommates. Do you really think we couldn't figure it out if we wanted to date each other? Is that what you think of your unnies?" This question was met with an assortment of shaking heads and muttered no's. "So no, Elly and I aren't really a couple. That was just a front we put up to try to discourage any further matchmaking attempts. But really, that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that this plan led to the breaking up of what had always been the most stable relationship in the band. So: Doyeon and Yoojung, now that the matchmaking is at an end, there's no reason not to be together. Make it happen."

Doyeon and Yoojung both looked at Suyeon as if they couldn't believe the words that were coming out of . Suyeon looked from one of them to the other. "Doyeon - do you remember how much you missed Yoojung when we went to the U.S. last fall and she couldn't come with us? Yoojung - do you remember how much you missed Doyeon whenever she'd go away to film a drama? Now, go to your room, and I want you to keep those feelings in mind when you're talking to each other. And don't come back until you've either gotten back together or you've agreed to split up but still be friends and still be able to do skinships for the Ki-Lings. Now go!" As Doyeon and Yoojung scurried off to their bedroom, Suyeon swept her gaze over the rest of the group. "And the rest of you, you'll sit here until they get back. I don't want anyone interrupting them or giving them any excuse not to finish this conversation once and for all, right now."

And with that, she crossed to the side of the room and leaned against the wall, her seething rage still evident on her face. After a little while, she seemed to have calmed down somewhat, so Elly walked over and leaned on the wall next to her.

"Well, if your goal was to frighten the maknaes, I think you've succeeded," Elly said.

Suyeon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I just got so frustrated and I couldn't take it anymore. This is why I wish no one would date anyone in the group."

"But you see how that works out, especially given the current situation," Elly said.

Suyeon nodded. "At this point, I'm just all about damage control." She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall.

"Well, I think after this, if anyone does have any drama, they'll be super careful about not letting it affect the group - they'd be terrified not to," Elly said quietly.

Suyeon slid down the wall, collapsing into a heap.

Elly could hear Suyeon starting to cry. She down next to her and threw her arm around Suyeon's shoulders. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Suyeon sniffled and looked over at Elly. "I never wanted to be this kind of a leader. I saw groups where the leaders yelled and the maknaes were scared and I was so happy that Weki Meki wasn't like that, and now we are."

Leaned closer so they had a chance of talking without the maknaes overhearing. "I think you're still doing okay. I think making it this far into the quarantine without having yelled at anybody was quite an accomplishment. The members of my group chat had started a pool to see whose leader would go the longest without totally losing it. It came down to you and Gfriend's Sowon, and then she snapped yesterday."

Suyeon blinked slowly as if she was having difficulty processing this information. "You guys talked about this?"

Elly shrugged. "What else have we got to do? It's not like we can go anywhere. I'm friends with a lot of the members of other groups who are older members but aren't the leaders, so we started a group chat. It helped to be able to talk to someone who was experiencing some of the same things you were."

Suyeon nodded. "I can understand that. I wish the leaders' group chat worked that way, but there's too much competitiveness there for anyone to really open up."

"Suyeon?"

Suyeon looked up and saw Yoojung and Doyeon coming back into the common room. She noticed that they were holding hands, and that their eyes were red. 

"Suyeon?" Doyeon said quietly. "We got back together, and we're sorry we caused drama that affected the whole group. I guess it was just cabin fever, you know?"

Suyeon nodded. "I'm glad you're back together, and I'm sorry I yelled at everyone today. Let's not have another day like this one, okay?"

"I don't know," Elly said, "I thought furious Suyeon was kind of hot."

Suyeon stared at Elly in disbelief.

Elly held up her hands and pretended to back away. "Just kidding! Just kidding! I'm glad you're not angry anymore!"