love manifests in a great many different ways. from person to person, friend to friend and lover to lover, the sound of someone saying “i love you,” is different every single time. this is a truth chaewon understands better than anyone.

she hears it clearly in the way eunbi affectionately calls her toy poodle, teddy bear, baby bear. the way she shares her food, and they both pig out on candy and chocolate coated popcorn and fill each other’s phones with selfies of funny faces together, their hamster cheeks puffed with food.

it is the way stern, capable, prim and proper younger member minjoo comes to her to be babied; to sometimes whine and be a child so she can be unnie. and chaewon knows it’s not just an act to make her feel better, just a strong, quiet person carrying too many things stopping by to drop their burdens and rest by her side for a bit.

the way yena always seems to know when she needs cheering up. when to make her screech with side-splitting laughter, and when to leave her alone, when not even a vaguely contextual joke makes enough nonsense to laugh at.

it is when hyewon disses her dance moves at the club, gets faced with her and still wakes her up bright and early for sunday church the very next day because it’s important to them. the way she very adamantly refuses to share food, but when chaewon looks away and back again, she’ll find pieces of food missing off her plate, traded for choice takoyaki from hyewon’s own.

when yuri and her argue about dance spots, and she makes herself obnoxious crowing about being right, but at the end of the day, they fall onto each other in a heap and watch tv while talking about life’s mysterious ups and downs.

and wise, perceptive sakura always giving her a hand to squeeze, to stop her from wringing them nervously in front of the cameras; is always half a wince ahead of when the stage hands are due to pop the confetti cannons, so it’s the least she can do, covering sakura’s ears for her for when they inevitably go off.

chaewon hears all of their ‘i love yous’, – some quiet, some loud – in their own respective languages, and does her very best to answer them with her own. she is a person who loves a lot and too much, and sometimes she gets strung up to dry for it. sometimes when the world takes too much from her and she feels her heart in several pieces, she can’t answer love with love, but only take