Seungwan feels the sheets prick at her back. Why does she feel like she's lying on a bed of nails? She paid a good five hundred bucks for this mattress, and she'll be damned if she couldn't sleep on it. Just keep adjusting until comfortable. You'll be fine, Seungwan.

Except she wasn't. Five tosses and six turns later, she was still very uncomfortable and very much awake. It didn't help that she had gnawing anxiety at the fact that she hadn't heard back from the producers yet. Usually, they would update her with progress every other day, but all she was experiencing for the past week was radio silence. She would drop in to the studio to check on them, but that would be an extremely weird thing to do at... Seungwan rolled over to check the time... 1:43 AM. Definitely couldn't drive by now, although she did consider whether or not a stray security guard would open the door for her.

Closing her eyes for one final attempt at tackling the sandman, she inhaled slowly, let her exhales come at the same pace. She imagined the sea, imagined waves, imagined bobbing boats and buoys and birds and all of the B words she could think of, excepting one, but none brought her closer to sleep. Screw tackling the sandman, she wished she could strangle him right now.

She sits upright. Maybe a glass of water would help, not that it ever did, but it was worth a shot. Maybe she could throw it right in the sandman's face. Now here she was threatening mythical beings. She really needed sleep.

Using her feet to feel around for her bear slippers on the floor, her toes touched the soft fuzz, sliding them on. Her hands instinctively grabbed her glasses off her bedside table, putting them on as she stands. Trudging to the kitchen, flicking on the dim counter lights, she grabs a glass from the cabinet and turns on the tap. The sound of the running faucet resounded in the small kitchen. Little things were always so loud at night. Not wanting to wake up Joohyun, Seungwan adjusted the handle to slow the flow to a drip. She would rather risk her impatience than a pouty genie. Actually, she might be adorable drowsy. Seungwan resisted the temptation of resetting the faucet to full force, instead leaning on the counter, arm muscles gradually tiring from having to prop up a glass now only half full.

To pass the time, she begun to count the drops. Drip. One. Drop. Two. Drip. Three. Step. Four. Step?

"You're awake at this hour?" Joohyun appeared in the corner of her vision, leaning against the door frame of her room. 

Seungwan startles, fumbling and almost dropping her glass into the sink. She catches it, but not before spilling some water on her heart print pajama pants. She would be a lot less disappointed if she hadn't waited about four minutes for the glass to drip drop it's way to being filled.

Turning her head to face Joohyun, trying to mask her pained expression, Seungwan responds, "You scared me! With how stealthy you are sometimes, I could almost believe that you had the ability to disappear and appear at will." Joohyun shoots back an incredulous expression. "But yeah," Seungwan continues, "I'm still awake. I could ask the same of you, you know. What are you up to?"

"Just out on the balcony. Just thinking." The genie shrugs. 

Seungwan takes a sip, eyebrows raising slightly. "Oh really, what are you thinking about?"

"Care to join me and find out?" Joohyun smirked, "Unless you're too busy sitting here waiting for your glass to fill up drop by drop."

A red blush crossed Seungwan's cheeks, thankfully obscured by the dim lighting. Her usually boisterous voice grew small. "I didn't mean for you to see any of that."

Joohyun chuckled, moving from her position to take Seungwan's free hand, tugging gently. "So are you joining me or not?"

Seungwan just nods, too preoccupied with how soft Joohyun's hand feels to reply. 

Before she knows it, they've stepped into the crisp night air, Seungwan wishing she had worn more than her faded old high school sweatshirt. Her toes contracted at the feeling of the wind coming through the hole in her left slipper. 

On the other hand, Joohyun looked quite comfortable. She had even less than Seungwan on, only a plain white t-shirt and sweats. At least there were no holes in her slippers. The singer didn't question it, chalking it all up to a magical cold resistance of some sort. There were a lot of things about Joohyun that were just not to be explained.

The shivers are replaced by the feeling of warm skin on her arm as she leaned on the railing of the balcony. Seungwan throws a look Joohyun's way. It was not a rejection of their proximity, more like a question.

"You wanted some warmth," Joohyun says, matter-of-factly.

"How did you--" Seungwan stops herself mid-sentence, lips forming an 'o' before nodding in understanding. "Right. Genie stuff."

"I don't really have to read your desires to tell that you're shivering, Seungwan."

"Nice to know that your wit never takes any off-hours."

Joohyun's eyes glitter with the reflections of streetlights. "It's a 24/7 thing." As a car whizzes by, 200 feet away, Joohyun's eyes appear to flash with amusement, the headlights seeming to ignite the glow of her irises. "Guess you'll have to get used to it."

Seungwan shoots back, "What if it gets boring?"

Joohyun's eyebrow quirks up, half suspicious, half offended. "Calling me boring already?"

Seungwan's laugh seems to carry itself over and out into the night sky. "No, never."

With that, they grow silent. Not uncomfortable, a nice kind of quiet. But Seungwan finds her eyes glancing about, lingering on Joohyun longer than usual, noticing how wistful, how thoughtful she looks. 

What is she looking at? Does she notice the empty streets, watch the stagnant streetlights interrupted by rhythms of cars going by? Does she see the high rises a ways to their left, giving off low ember light from some windows, forming a haphazard pattern across the facade, a patchwork of people still awake like they are?

She must be, because she starts talking. "What do you think they're doing? Are they talking in quiet voices because their walls are thin and they don't want to wake the neighbors?"

"Quite the overactive imagination, Joohyun. I was thinking that they were dancing around their living room, a quiet slow dance. Every so often they will look out their penthouse window and see the same view we are."

The roll of Joohyun's eyes doesn't match the softness of her smile. "And you call me imaginative."

They played a game like that, watching stray people go by and guessing their stories. There was a group of men walking down the street below, some decked in leather jackets, others having a smoke. Were they going to a party? Drunk from pre-gaming, miscalculating the strength of playful nudges and almost shoving their friends into the street? Were they corporates too sick of their nine to five jobs, ready to let the weekend send them flying before they smack into the asphalt of another bleak Monday? Maybe they were reckless college students, here in the city for a taste of freedom that they never got when they were back home?

"About half of them have beards. There's no way that they're college students!"

"Joohyun, you clearly have not met half of the dudes who were at my high school. I'm convinced that none of them were ever taught how to use a razor. Let's just say that it's too hard to tell from here."

"I would tell you to get your eyes checked, but I already know that your prescription is horrible."

Seungwan squints, playfully pushing up her glasses as if proving a point. "Fine, then chalk it up to my horrible vision. At least it's not hard to tell that they're having fun."

Folding her arms, a satisfied expression crosses Joohyun's face. "That's one thing we can agree on."

Seungwan rests one arm on the railing, bringing the other down to turn more comfortably towards Joohyun. She rests her face in her palm, leaning in inquisitively. "Do you think about these things often?"

The genie pauses for a second in thought. "I suppose I do. I like thinking about people, their lives."

The singer recalls the time that Joohyun had laid out her desires like arranging a cheese platter, delicate finger-foods ready for tasting. "So psychoanalyzing everyone isn't unique to a master, is it?"

"To the contrary, I believe. Yes, it's true that I can ruminate on any passersby, but with masters, I have a lot more information at my disposal, if that makes sense." Seungwan nods without remark, feeling as though Joohyun wishes to say more. The silence allows her to continue. "I admit that I'm used to watching humanity from a distance. I suppose that with all these years of my removed observation, I've developed a sort of habit towards pondering people's motivations and how they've shaped their lives -- how they ended up where they are."

"You could be some sort of..." Seungwan takes a moment to recall the proper terms, "...renowned psychologist or anthropologist with all of the information you've collected by now."

"That would certainly be a feat, wouldn't it? Though I have to admit that, no, I wouldn't. The longer I've lived, the more I've realized that two centuries has still not been nearly enough time to completely understand humanity. I don't think even a thousand years could bring me any closer." Humans always found ways to surprise her. Seungwan always did, even now.

The object of her thoughts looks across the dark city skyline, asking Joohyun a question without meeting her eyes. "Weren't you human once?" 

"I was -- Joohyun was, a long time ago."

"Doesn't being human clarify the human condition, if not a little bit?"

Seungwan is surprisingly introspective, Joohyun notes. Oftentimes, she can fumble, can be awkward, sometimes even be a bumbling fool, loud to overcompensate for silent insecurities. And yet other times, she's like this. Quiet, reserved, an attentive listener. Joohyun supposes that all of that songwriting, all of those investigations into love, doing that could make anyone a poet, a philosopher-king. In a previous era, perhaps Seungwan would be heralded as a thinker. A writer under a pseudonym. An anonymous wonder.

But we're in the 21st century now. Everyone thinks these days. They think about what they'll have for lunch, think about why the sky is blue, why the tide comes to shore. Humanity's discovered so much, found so little. Of all of the knowledge in the universe, all they have is what they've collected about this tiny speck in the sea of it all. They build their telescopes and observatories, try to see so far, try to spot a distant island bobbing in the ocean of stars. But how much can you know from only looking at something? Rather it be that you touch it, place the earth, the stars, the galaxies and cradle them within your hands. Let them filter through like grains of sand slipping through grasping fingers.

It is so much easier to think than to touch. 

Even these thoughts aren't shared unless in novels, unless they get on the New York Times' Best Sellers List. Unless your thoughts are monetized, they don't mean anything to anyone. Your advice, deep musings about the universe, they aren't valuable unless someone has to pay for them. Joohyun thought otherwise, of course, but she wondered if anyone else still did. 

"Does thinking about love bring you any closer to understanding it, Seungwan?"

"I guess not, but I think that being in love might."

"Have you been in love to know?" Joohyun knows the answer already, she assumes. She knows Seungwan's dating history, a long list of exactly zero names. She can't help but feel it was better this way.

Seungwan looks at Joohyun, watches her eyes shift as they reflect the glow of the city at night. "Not yet." Seungwan breaks their gaze. "I think I could, though, fall in love." She closes her eyes, eyelashes gently overlapping like the bristles of a paintbrush. Juxtaposed against the steel and glass backdrop, Joohyun thinks that she ought to take a picture. But she wasn't Seulgi. She didn't think that any amount of posing or professional expertise would do her subject justice. Or maybe she was the kind of muse that could make any photo beautiful. Joohyun didn't have a camera to find out, so she resigns to continuing their conversation.

"Being human wouldn't help me understand being human any more than a bacterium would looking through a microscope at its own petri dish. When we're in the thralls of something, whether it be a roller coaster ride, the human condition, or even..." Her eyes naturally gravitate to Seungwan, "...love itself, we never stop to truly understand why." She pauses. "Well, I suppose we do, sometimes. Humans try to rationalize their existence so often. But it's a pointless kind of inquiry. We either never stop for long enough to actually understand why we exist, or we stop for so long that we forget about existing entirely."

Seungwan makes no move to respond, just lets the cool air surround her, already enveloped in the sound of Joohyun's voice, enveloped in a new understanding of life. The genie always gave her a new perspective. 

Joohyun went on, "I feel like that was a really long-winded way of saying a simple answer. Humanity's complex."

"I understand."

Joohyun can't help but laugh. "I guess a subsidiary point is kind of that we don't understand -- that we won't."

"Isn't that okay too? I think existing might just be more important than understanding why."

"You might be right. I've always been one of those people who has taken so long to think about the why that I've forgotten the how."

"Then remember now."

"Remember?"

Seungwan adjusts herself, takes Joohyun's hands in her own, catching the genie off guard.

"Seungwan, what are you--"

"You can feel my palms, right? Rough?"

She nods as the singer traces her fingertips across Joohyun's.

"And you can feel these fingertips? All of the callouses from years pressed to strings?"

Another nod.

Suddenly, Seungwan pulls Joohyun close, wraps her arms around her. Joohyun is enveloped in the scent of vanilla, of fresh laundry. Her hair is as soft as her sweater, so much so that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Her hug, even softer, like caressing the edges of a cloud. But it's electric, too. Like the static of a rustling blanket. Like a cumulonimbus. 

"And you can feel this hug? Feel a place of warmth even on this cold night?"

Joohyun doesn't nod this time. She's too busy thinking about how fast her heart is beating, too busy remembering the feeling of calloused fingertips and rough hands, feeling the wisps of the edges of Seungwan's hair brush against her cheek in the slow breeze. She knows that Seungwan didn't point it out, knows that Seungwan didn't direct her attention to this particular feeling, but as her heart slams against her ribcage, she almost thinks she can feel Seungwan's beating back, as if their hearts were competing in a race, still miles away from the finish line. 

Seungwan pulls back, leaving Joohyun still chasing the edges of an island where the scent of vanilla is carried over waves of hair and wool. 

She comes back. To this world where the buildings scrape the sky, where the steel is unfeeling, where the magic is nearly dead. The sharp April air bites at her cheeks. Her hands tremble, none to hold until Seungwan slips her own back into Joohyun's. Strangely, they tremble more, even if Seungwan is a heater, radiating like a bonfire on a lonely beach. All Joohyun has to do is put up her hands to the flame, feel the warmth. She made things simple like that.

"Do you remember?"

Joohyun wasn't sure what she was supposed to garner from all of that. It seems that all Seungwan has left her with is shaky hands and a racing heart, a memory she could carry across lifetimes. 

Seungwan takes her silence as its own reply. "As long as you're with me, I want you to remember that you exist."