Sana wasn’t lying when she’d told Nayeon she hadn’t made (m)any friends in their university since the semester started. 

That by no means meant she wasn't popular, though—on the contrary, it seemed like even people she could've sworn she never met before would take the time to pause and call out her name excitedly (or quite obnoxiously whisper things like “So that’s Minatozaki Sana!”) whenever she walked the halls by herself.

She’d smile and wave at each of them brightly without missing a beat, all while questioning the situation in her head. Sure, she didn’t mind being noticed, but she was anxious to find out exactly what she was being noticed for.

And she wanted to know for sure that she was getting noticed for anything but that—

“Hey, Sana, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Park Jihyo, one of Sana’s closest friends from her high school, second only to both Momo and Mina, broke through her thoughts one weekend afternoon when they’d finally managed to meet up after several rain checks (mostly on Jihyo’s end, as she almost always had her hands full with student council duties, having already been elected president even though she was still in her junior year). “You’re just not capable of keeping a low profile even if you tried, that’s all,” she added teasingly, getting a mock exasperated whine of her name in return.

“So, you think I’m just being paranoid?” the other girl wondered aloud, and while there was no bite in her tone, it was thick with uncertainty. She slouched on her seat, absentmindedly stirring her latte with a teaspoon, unconcerned that it was quickly becoming lukewarm. 

(She didn’t have the heart to tell Jihyo, who always ordered for her whenever they hung out at that particular café close to their school, that she only liked her coffee cold.)

“After what happened last summer, being a bit paranoid would be perfectly normal. But trust me, okay?” Jihyo answered, her own voice calm and reassuring. “My sunbaes from the student council who are in your university would let me know if they’ve heard any of those rumors being spread about you. I’ve been keeping in touch with them.”

“What? Oh, no, you don’t have to go through all that trouble for me, Jihyo-yah!” Sana said hastily, worried about piling even more on Jihyo's already never-empty plate of work. “You’re already so busy.”

“Well,” the younger girl shrugged lightly, “You know I’ve already committed myself to going through all sorts of trouble for you, anyway. So it's nothing I can't handle.”

Sana felt guilt twisting her gut at the words. “Jihyo, I—”

“Look, I’m not asking for anything in return, and I never will,” Jihyo cut in, her nonchalance quickly dissipating into an air of firmness. “I want to do this for you. So just calm down and let me.”

Sana leaned back on to her chair, relenting. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“That’s right, you really don’t,” the younger girl said flatly, although the playful, upward quirk of her lips gave away the fact that her words weren’t to be taken seriously. 

Come to think of it, Sana mused inwardly, her mind momentarily drifting to a jumble of past memories, the overflowing sincerity and seemingly unstoppable resolve that always shone in Jihyo’s eyes whenever she felt especially passionate about something was probably what had drawn Sana to the girl in the first place. 

Jihyo was always looking out for Mina, too, ever since that time her Japanese classmate had passed out in the middle of gym class—in fact, the first time Sana met Jihyo was when the younger girl not only went with Mina to the hospital, but also helped Sana and Momo talk with the doctors, as well as fill out the necessary paperwork.

And so, when Jihyo had, seemingly out of the blue, revealed her interest towards the older girl a year and a half after that, with the same determined look she was giving her right then, Sana was surprised she was finding it harder to skirt around her the way she usually did with all the other students who’d tried their luck getting her to date them.

“I’m really flattered, Park Jihyo-ssi,” sixteen-year-old Sana said in her then slightly stiff but remarkably near-fluent Korean, letting out a laugh that Jihyo could swear was similar to the melody of clinking wine glasses—although, with all due respect, she would say that even the most expensive ones could never sound just as heavenly. “Are you going to ask me out on a date, then?”

“No,” Jihyo said, in that clipped, business-like tone that made her sound years older than she actually was. 

Sana blinked, taken aback by the fact that Jihyo was rejecting her offer for a date despite the latter’s bold confession from a few minutes ago. “No?” she echoed.

“No, Sana sunbae. Because I know what comes next. You’ll give me the date of my dreams, and then tell me it won’t work out between us when it’s over.” 

The student council’s information network was definitely a force to be reckoned with, the other girl told herself, if even gossip that was as trivial as Sana’s ridiculously roundabout way of rejecting her suitors could reach the ears of the perpetually academically occupied Park Jihyo.

Sana couldn’t hold back a chuckle at the other girl’s choice of words. “The date of your dreams, huh?” She wondered if someone had actually said that, or if Jihyo simply arrived at that conclusion on her own based on all the hearsay. “It's a little better than just... well, saying no, without giving you a chance, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Jihyo raised an eyebrow, as if to disprove the other girl’s statement. “What if you’re just too nice, or too scared, to turn me down right from the start?”

“Then, Jihyo-ssi,” Sana said relatively calmly in response, even as her thoughts raced a mile a minute trying to make sense of all this, because, one: Park Jihyo was someone she didn't know nearly as well as, say, Mina did, and was someone she never really saw as anything beyond a younger sister figure until this confession all but an alternative right in her face; and two: Park Jihyo was interested in her? Really? Was Sana even her type? 

Trying to give the other girl the impression that she could at least possess a little bit of tact, she ended up biting back all the other questions in her head and settled instead with, “What do you want to do?”

“Not much,” Jihyo replied, obviously prepared for the question, the intensity of her stare mellowing into a more laid-back expression. “I want to spend more time with you, that’s all. I don’t want to force you into making a decision just like everyone else does. I just want to stay by your side, sunbae.” A cocky, competitive smirk suddenly broke through her straight face as she spoke her next words. “And if you do choose me in the end, you'll do it because you’ve fallen for me yourself.”

Sana fell silent, struggling to get a good read on the girl in front of her as they both stood facing each other at the empty school hallway by the student council office that afternoon. Jihyo was visibly shorter than she was, but what she lacked in height, she more than made up for with an unshakeable drive to go after whatever it was that she wanted.

It just so happened that what she wanted—or rather, who—was right in front of her. And while Jihyo was no stranger to the focus and diligence needed to achieve her goals, right then she allowed herself just a second to wonder just how hard she would have to work to even get a shot at this one...

“Okay,” Sana finally answered, after what seemed like hours of pin-drop silence between the both of them.

“O-Okay?” Jihyo stuttered, her confident aura wavering for a moment, expecting to be met with resistance, but instead becoming the recipient of a bright, radiant grin that Jihyo believed could only belong to either Sana or the sun itself.

“Okay,” Sana repeated with a series of eager nods that made her look a lot like a moving animal bobblehead. (Maybe a chipmunk, or a hamster, Jihyo inwardly noted.) As an afterthought, she added, “I want you to do something for me, though.”

“What is it?” 

Her forehead wrinkled in the cutest way as she tried—and miserably failed—to put on a stern expression. “If you want to hang out with me more, stop calling me sunbae. Mina says I’m only two months older than you!”

“What? But sunbae—”

“What did I just say?” This time, the edge of warning digging into her voice actually scared the younger girl a lot more than she would later admit.

Jihyo let out a deep breath in defeat. Who was she kidding? Even then, she knew she’d flat-out do whatever Sana wanted her to without hesitation, anyhow.

“Fine, you win… Sana-yah.”

Both girls found themselves smiling at the memory, Sana being the first to speak about it. “You know, I still don’t understand what it is you see in me. It's been a couple of years, at least. Most people would’ve given up by now, right?”

Jihyo let out a playful scoff. “Give me some credit here. You know I’m not most people.”

“I know, you're Park Jihyo,” Sana answered with a tender smile and little giggle, which didn’t fail to summon a tinge of pink on to Jihyo’s cheeks; the color instantly turning into a flaming red when Jihyo felt Sana suddenly reach out and grab her hand from the top of the table. “By the way, remember what we talked about before, on the phone? Have you maybe heard anything about it from your sunbaes, too?”

“U-Um, to be honest,” the other girl mumbled, suddenly shy because of the unexpected physical contact (She didn’t know why she still got flustered every single time; she was painfully aware of how acts of skinship were second nature to Sana, after all.), unable to meet the hopeful glimmer in the older girl’s eyes, “They’ve told me a lot of things about that Im Nayeon while I was asking about you, and none of them exactly put her in a, well, positive light.”

“Yeah, I’ve probably heard most of them, anyway,” Sana said glumly, leaning back on her seat, lower lip jutting out a little. “But she’s not all that bad, Jihyo-yah, really.”

“Says the person who only ever sees the good in everybody,” Jihyo shot back with an affectionate roll of the eyes, trying hard to ignore the way Sana still had their hands together. “Anyway, it doesn’t look like the sunbaes know anything about,” she lowered her voice discreetly to throw off anyone around who might be listening, “how she gets those bruises. Or if there’s someone hurting her.”

“I think no one actually cares enough to know,” the other girl replied, looking visibly troubled. “But—But it’s like the wounds get worse every time I see her. Yesterday she came to class with this bad cut on her lip. And she wouldn’t talk to me...” she trailed off with a forlorn sigh.

“Look, I know you want to help her, of course you do,” Jihyo told her gently. “But based on what you’ve told me so far, if she keeps coming to school with injuries, don’t you think she might’ve gotten them at home?”

“At home?” Sana’s eyes widened, horrified by the possibility. “W-Why would her own family do that to her?”

The younger girl gave her a sympathetic look. “Chaebols aren’t exactly known for being nice, Sana-yah. Even to their own children. Sometimes, especially to their own children.”

Sana sat staring at her untouched latte on the table in front of her, seemingly burning a hole through the cup as her brows furrowed together in thought, one cheek resting on her palm. Jihyo waited patiently, letting the ambient noises of the cafe wash over them as she took a sip out of her coffee.

She tilted her head upward when, after more than a few minutes, Sana finally broke the silence between them.

“I can’t just let this go, Jihyo,” the girl said slowly, straightening in her seat, as if to make sure each word left little room for argument—both from Jihyo and herself. “I—I need to do something.”

“Someone has to do something,” Jihyo corrected pointedly. “It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Who’s going to do it, then?” Sana retorted, the deep frown on her lips telling Jihyo that she wasn’t happy with the answer she’d gotten. “What if—What if no one ever does?”

“It’s dangerous to get involved in family matters,” Jihyo tried to dissuade the other girl. “Especially theirs. Sana, it’s not that I don’t care,” she added, her tense expression softening briefly as she bit her lower lip and looked away, “I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you. That’s all.”

“I know, but… I’m sorry, Jihyo-yah,” Sana said, refusing to back down, “You can’t change my mind about this.”

By the steely resolve that would not leave her eyes even after they parted that day, Jihyo would figure out, a lot earlier than the other girl, just how emotionally attached she would become to whoever this Nayeon was.

The younger girl breathed out, long and resigned. “You were so close to getting into a whole mess a few months ago, and here you are willing to dive headfirst into another one all over again.” 

Jihyo probably should've seen this coming.

Jihyo probably should’ve tried harder to stop her right then. 

Jihyo should’ve probably made her move and asked Sana to be hers right then.

Instead, she folded her arms on the table across the other girl and made the uncharacteristically stupid decision of ignoring the feeling of unease gnawing at the corners of her mind.

“That girl must be something special, huh?”

-----

Fate had given Sana several opportunities to make good on the promise she’d made in her mind, that day in front of Nayeon’s locker.

And so she felt she could never forgive herself for the one time she wasn’t there to prevent what had happened to the girl, two years later.

“Sana unnie,” Nayeon’s roommate Chou Tzuyu spoke tersely on the phone one afternoon. “Where are you? Can—Can you come to the apartment? Ah-tzi… Nayeon is… she’s—”

Hearing the cracks in Tzuyu’s voice, Sana tried to keep her own steady for the younger girl, even as a dark shadow of dread started to creep up inside of her. “Hey Tzuyu-ah? Take deep breaths, okay? Like this.” She waited for Tzuyu to calm down on the other line before speaking once more. “Now, what happened to Nayeon unnie?”

The next words Sana heard were more than enough to make her blood run cold. 

“She looks like… like someone h-hit her.”

Sana couldn’t remember if she’d said anything before hanging up, but she was up on her feet, walking right out of her last class of the day, and heading to Nayeon and Tzuyu’s apartment before she could second-guess her decision. Before she could remember that, oh, she’d actually been avoiding Nayeon on purpose for the last month or so… 

No, that doesn’t matter, she said to herself, immediately tamping down the dread that was just beginning to pool at the pit of her stomach, and brushing the thought away while she took a familiar route towards an even more familiar destination. Making sure Nayeon was okay would always come first; she would shove everything else, including her own stupid feelings about yet another complication that had entered the other girl’s life, out of the way, without batting an eye. 

Even if said complication turned out to be a ghost of Nayeon’s past.

A series of shrill barking sounds from the other side of Nayeon’s front door made Sana look up, snapping her out of her thoughts. “A dog?” she mumbled. “That means she—”

The door swung open right after her first knock. “Sana unnie!” Tzuyu yanked her inside before she could let out a greeting in response.

“Um, sorry about that,” the tall girl in front of Sana muttered, rubbing the side of her neck, once they’d both settled into the apartment’s living room. “We didn’t want Kookeu running out again, so...”

“Hey, Sana unnie,” Kim Dahyun, Tzuyu’s high school classmate (who’d recently become her girlfriend, much to Sana’s delight when she heard the news), said casually, carrying what looked like a white and cream pomeranian in her arms as she approached. “You haven’t met Kookeu yet, right?”

Sana shook her head. “Can I?” she asked, raising tentative hands towards the small dog, which stared at her with round, unblinking eyes. Dahyun nodded, easing Kookeu into the older girl’s hold. It almost immediately nuzzled, nose-first, deeper into her embrace.

“Hey, baby boy,” she cooed softly into its soft tufts of fur, letting out a delighted squeal at the feel of its cold, wet snout on her cheek. “Nayeonnie told me so much about you.”

“Oh, wow, he usually hates strangers,” Dahyun commented with a pout that made her look years younger than she already was. “He only let me pet him after two months! Two whole months!”

“But that was years ago, Dahyun unnie,” Tzuyu said, laying a hand on the other girl’s shoulder and rubbing on it reassuringly. “He likes you now, doesn’t he?”

“What about you, though?” Dahyun asked, a sly smile playing on her lips as she turned to look up at Tzuyu innocently. “Do you like me, Tzuyu?”

The question made the younger girl flush on both cheeks, and the tips of her ears, instantly. While the Tzuyu of a few months ago would’ve probably dodged the topic completely, right then she leaned forward into a little slouch, hiding her warm, embarrassed face into the crook of Dahyun’s neck.

“O-Of course I do,” she said, just slightly muffled by her lips pressed onto Dahyun’s shoulder. “I tell you all the time…”

“I know,” the shorter girl said, circling her arms around Tzuyu’s waist, the tone of her voice somehow sounding both smug, sweet and sincere all at the same time. “I just like hearing you say it, that's all.”

Sana, meanwhile, burrowed her own face into Kookeu’s fur, pretending not to hear them even while they continued talking, content to let them stay inside their own little bubble for a moment. 

It must be nice, she told herself as she allowed her thoughts to drift, falling for someone who's brave enough to catch you.

She truly believed that Chou Tzuyu, of all people, deserved all the happiness the world could give her. If said happiness turned out to be in the form of a slightly unpredictable, pale-skinned girl who could give someone the sharpest glare one second and the brightest eye smile the next, Sana was all for it.

Still, while she’d obviously taken a liking to Dahyun as soon as she’d met her a few weeks ago, that didn't mean she would hesitate to raze hell on the girl if she so much as made Tzuyu shed a single tear. (With Nayeon’s help, most likely, because even Sana knew she couldn't look the least bit scary or intimidating no matter how hard she tried.)

Kookeu started to squirm in her arms about a minute later, and she suddenly remembered what she’d come for. “Tzuyu-ah, where’s Nayeon unnie?” 

“Oh, um... She’s in her room. But I probably should've told you earlier,” the younger girl hesitated, reluctantly pulling away from Dahyun’s hold. “She’s not exactly alone.”

Sana felt her stomach drop at the words, and she tried not to let her smile falter. Based on Tzuyu’s apprehensive body language, she wasn’t fully comfortable leaving her roommate alone with whoever it was behind her bedroom door.

And frankly, Sana wasn’t, either. 

“You should go check on them, unnie. Here, I’ll take Kookeu for you,” Dahyun offered, seemingly sensing the shared tension in the room. 

“Thanks, Dahyun-ah,” Sana replied distractedly, her eyes already wandering to the door she must've walked through a thousand times before. She’d even gone inside that very room with Nayeon the day she'd moved into the apartment...

Right then, though, for the first time, she felt like a stranger as she pushed the door just slightly ajar.

The sight of Nayeon with tears in her eyes, an unmistakably throbbing, swollen cheek, and dried blood on the side of her lip, caused a sharp pang of guilt and regret, together with a tentative twinge of longing to make things better, to pierce through Sana’s chest.

It was an altogether different emotion that stabbed at her when she saw the other girl in the room. Tall, with brown hair the color of chestnuts that just touched her broad shoulders, a worried expression creasing her brows as she wiped Nayeon’s tears with her thumb, she didn’t have to turn her head in Sana’s direction for her to know who she was.

After all, she’d already seen Yoo Jeongyeon at least two times before.

Somehow, Sana felt, before she saw, the world around her suddenly enveloping itself into a thick, static blanket of motionlessness just as she was about to fully enter the room. She watched in wonder as a trickling tear froze mid-fall on the side of Nayeon’s face. 

She listened to the words she’d formed in her head dying in before she could say them.

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Sana asked herself instead, walking further inside. Sure enough, both Jeongyeon and Nayeon stayed sitting on the edge of the latter’s bed, still and unresponsive. Her hand reached out, only for her to curl her fingers just shy of Nayeon’s forearm. “Nayeon unnie...” 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to take Kookeu from your parents today?” she questioned, unknowingly voicing her thoughts out loud while she started to pace in a tight line. “Wait, no, I should’ve checked up on you instead of running away like an idiot! I shouldn’t have let you go without me. This is all my fault.” She stopped briefly and let out a sharp exhale, lowering herself in front of the other girl just enough to gently brush the floating tear off her face. “Unnie,” Sana said, much more softly, meeting Nayeon’s blank, glassy eyes, “I’m sorry.”

“And you,” she whirled around to face an unmoving Jeongyeon, fighting to stop any ridiculous feelings (Feelings she definitely didn’t have any right to have, she made sure to remind herself.) from bubbling up from her chest and translating into words, or worse. “Oh, never mind. I don’t even know what to say to someone I’ve never technically met.”

Sana ran a hand through her hair, dyed a striking golden orange, mentally debating between staying or walking out of the room, when she heard two hushed but distinct voices from just outside the door, the sounds easily seeping through the walls amidst the dead silence of everything else around her.

“...shouldn’t even be happening…”

“How many times has it been…”

“...sure it’s not your power coming back or...?”

“...it’s not me, unnie...”

Sana found herself throwing the door open before Dahyun or Tzuyu could get another word out, wanting answers to what in the world was happening—or better yet, not happening—right then. “Can both of you tell me what the heck is going on right now?” she demanded, staring questioningly at the two stunned girls who’d turned at the creaking of Nayeon’s door.

“S-Sana unnie! How—” Tzuyu stammered, her eyes growing wide, shocked at the sight of someone other than her and Dahyun breathing, moving, and talking, while the rest of the world supposedly shouldn’t have been.

“Yah! It's you,” Dahyun cut in with a gasp, just as surprised. “You’re the one who’s been stopping time!”

“It’s not stopping time—” both Sana and Tzuyu found themselves saying together, with even the exact same exasperated tone. However, judging from the deadpanned look on Tzuyu’s face, it seemed like she’d been used to telling her girlfriend the words for far longer.

Dahyun waved a hand dismissively, obviously unbothered by the correction. “Same difference. Sana unnie, how long have you been able to do it?”

“How—How are you so sure it’s even me?” she countered, even though the quiver in her voice gave away the fact that she probably already knew the answer. 

“I did the same thing for the past year or so, even before I moved here,” Tzuyu stepped in to explain. “And in that year, every single day, I would see everything and everyone around me just… just stopping, just like this. But then, a few months ago,” she added, a little more shyly, her mind seemingly playing a fond memory, “Dahyun unnie could move, too.”

“And now, it looks like you can, too,” Dahyun continued. “We don’t know how this is happening. All we know is that we thought it was gone, but now, for some reason, the power might've transferred to you or something. That's why you're seeing all of this,” she sweeped an arm, gesturing to the space between them, “right now.”

As if right on cue, Sana spotted, from the corner of her eye, a Kookeu that had stopped mid-leap from the sofa and was suspended in midair, a few inches from the living room floor. “None of this makes any sense,” she said with a tired groan.

“I gave up trying to understand it a long time ago, to be honest,” Tzuyu replied with a small frown, her eyes following Sana’s line of sight.

“Time doesn’t stop for anything you hold in your hand, o