They aren’t blind to it, (how could anybody be?) but for the sake of their group, their agency, and their very public lifestyles, Hyejin and Wheein made an unspoken pact long ago to never openly discuss how their two unnies acted around each other.

Of course certain things sometimes fall through the cracks, during concerts and variety shows. There are some live broadcasts they do as a group when the camera catches one too many knowing glances and loud giggles meant to cover up a comment that shouldn’t have been said. After all, if Yongsun and Byulyi decide to keep acting flirty right in front of the camera, that’s their choice. For their part, Hyejin and Wheein try to avoid the topic as much as possible.

In the here and now, they are all waiting in their agency’s lobby for Byulyi, it’s the day they’re all supposed to fly out to Bangkok for their fanmeet.

“Ahh, Byulyi-unnie is five minutes late! She has to treat us to dinner next time!” Hyejin announces to nobody in particular. A few feet away from her, Wheein is playing a game on her phone.

Finally, they hear running from the back entrance and the smooth rattle of luggage wheels on linoleum. As if on cue, Moon Byulyi comes in through a door, luggage in tow and cheeks pink underneath her face mask. She bows low in front of their manager and the rest of the staff. “Sorry! My alarm didn’t go off!”

Their Manager waves off the apology with a kind smile and barks out orders for everyone to start loading up the cars.

Putting away her game, Wheein sees Hyejin gearing up to tease their unnie about being late, until Byulyi makes a clear beeline for Yongsun.

“Hi. You ready to go?” Taking her facemask off, Byulyi smiles at their leader in a way that was all too familiar.

Yongsun smiles back, hitching up her bag and looping her arm through Byulyi’s so they could walk to their car together, “About time you got here.”

Wheein shares a look with Hyejin before grabbing their bags and walking to their own car.

---

Byul couldn’t understand, at first, why it bothered her so much that this one girl out of the dozens of other trainees in their batch seemed to genuinely dislike her. She had already apologized for mistaking her for a junior, as well as for the whole Grand Theft Heels incident, yet still, Kim Yongsun mostly avoided her. After a while, she even convinced herself that she didn’t quite like the other girl either, still anytime Yongsun coolly brushed her off or purposefully walked past her without making eye-contact, it felt like someone adding cold weights to Byul’s gut.

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she finally decided to do something about it.

Later, much, much later. When everyone else had gone home after practice and it was just her and Yongsun packing their bags did she finally muster enough courage to--

“Ah, Unnie?”

It didn’t escape her notice how the older girl clearly steeled herself before turning to face her, “Yes?”

She tried for a smile, “I’m--ah. Would you wanna? Ehrm. Are you hungry?”

The older girl blinked a couple of times, confused. “Pardon?”

Byul cleared , “I’m ah, asking if you wanted to maybe grab a bite to eat?”

Yongsun frowned, her grip on her gym bag tightening. “You’re very confusing Moon Byulyi-ssi.”

“I know,” She dipped her head in embarrassment, already regretting this whole decision. “I’m sorry again for that, from before I mean. I didn’t--I wasn’t trying to disrespect you or anything. It’s just that you look so young.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

Byul couldn’t help her chuckle, this definitely wasn’t going according to plan. “Well, you are very pretty.” At that she smirked, she was already making a total fool of herself, might as well embrace it. “So? What do you say?”

Fully bracing herself for an outright rejection, she couldn’t deny the shock when Yongsun met her smirk with one of her own. The hard expression in her eyes softening just a little bit. “Ok. Only because I skipped dinner though.”

When they walked out of the agency together, Byul felt oddly lighter as they strode towards the nearest restaurant.

---

Hyejin hated and loved overseas schedules. She loved the thrill of performing and meeting their fans all over the world. She hated that she never got to actually spend enough time outside of their hotel room to explore whatever new country they were in.

Still, Bangkok is exciting, and she relishes the familiar thrum of adrenaline in her veins as she patiently sits in the makeup chair. Behind her she could hear a familiar peal of laughter, and looks up from her phone just enough to see her two unnies taking pictures of each other with a polaroid camera in the makeup mirror’s reflection.

“Yong, tilt your head to the left--no too much! Back, yes! Perfect!”

“Let me see before you take the next one.” Hyejin watches Yongsun skip over, resting her chin on Byulyi’s shoulder while the other girl patiently blew on the polaroid photo.

“When you take mine, remember what I told you about thirds ok?”

“Yes, yes I remember.”

“And don’t forget--”

“--To find the light. Ah, Byul-ah! I remember!”

Byulyi turns her head to Yong, her smile teasing yet soft. The rapper held up a small polaroid, “So pretty. As always.”

Yongsun rolls her eyes as she takes the polaroid, turning away from Byul and walking a few steps in the other direction. Still, from the safety of her makeup chair, Hyejin watches as Yongsun tries and fails to hide a smile before finally looking at the finished polaroid.

---

They fought too, of course, loud and vicious, with words like daggers and fists flying at each other. Crashing headfirst into walls any normal friendship needed in order to survive.

When they all decided to move in together as trainees, it seemed practical at the time. Still, it was hard sharing space and letting other people into the privacy of your life. So it was only natural that the four of them got into fights, some more than others.

It wasn’t that Yong wanted to fight with Byul, in fact it was the opposite. They were just so similar that sometimes she couldn’t help it.

It was after a particularly bad fight in their rooftop house, with sharp words and a slammed door that Yongsun got really scared. After one too many cold silences between her and Byul, she began to enter into a mild state of panic.

She’s had friends fall out of her life before, some of them through misunderstandings, others she just lost contact with through the years, especially when she signed on to be a trainee. Usually, she could get over it pretty quickly. There were always more friends to be made.

Not this though , she thought, panic a cold weight in her gut, not Byul . Something inside told her that this would haunt her forever, this would hurt her the most.

She was mulling over an apology late at night when she heard a soft knock at her bedroom door. Her heart felt like it dropped down to her feet. She took a deep breath before getting up and padding toward the door.

She already knew who it would be, still the anticipation wedged itself somewhere between her heart and her head, making it hard to swallow as she opened the door. In the sparse light from their window, Byulyi looked impossibly young, almost drowning in the oversized sweater and sweatpants that she slept in.

“Yong,” the other girl said softly.

“I know, me too.”

They hugged it out, and the relief was so intense, Yongsun thought she might cry from it. Instead she pulled away and gave her best friend a smile, both arms still loosely slung over Byul’s shoulders. “We have a long day ahead of us. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Byul smiled, the motion of it wrinkling her nose in the way Yongsun just found too cute. “Yeahp! G’night Yong!”

The next day, Yongsun walked into their rehearsal room to see the other three already warming up. It didn’t escape her notice how Wheein and Hyejin stared warily between her and Byul. She smiled. “Good morning!”

“Morning Unnie.” Wheein cast another nervous glance at her. This was fun.

Yong shed her sweater and cap and purposefully strode toward Byul, slinging an arm around her shoulders..

Unfazed, Byul’s hand automatically went around her waist. Across from them, Hyejin and Wheein all but had their mouths open. It took everything she had not to just burst out laughing.

From the corner of eye, she caught Byul smiling at her. Yong smiled back before clapping her hands and officially starting their practice session.

---

Once they were finally back in their own room after the fanmeet, Wheein makes a beeline for her bed, jumping  on it with a loud sigh of relief. “Ready to sleep!”

“Not yet! You promised to help me braid my hair before bed!”

“But first I will do Hyejin-ssi’s hair!” After ten years of knowing each other, Wheein still smiles at her friend’s little quirks that stuck around even after middle school. She has dozens of memories of brushing or braiding Hyejin’s hair at sleepovers or during school trips.

She waits for her friend to crawl over and get into position before dutifully grabbing a brush from the bedside table and running it through Hyejin’s long locks. After a few minutes of companionable silence, they hear laughter and muffled voices in the room next to theirs.

“They don’t sound tired at all.” Hyejin says, not even looking up from the game she was playing on her phone.

Wheein smiles, putting the brush aside and sectioning off Hyejin’s hair. “Not when they’re with each other.”

In front of her, Hyejin gives a non-committal hum. They are quickly entering into ‘Things-We-Said-We’d-Never-Speak-Aloud’ territory but Wheein is feeling a little brave about it tonight. “Do you think they want to be together?”

This time, Hyejin turns to face her fully, her hair slipping from Wheein’s fingers. The look on her best friend’s face is sad, and Wheein understands. She feels sad whenever she thinks about it too.

It is a sad reality of their life, belonging not to themselves but to their agency and to their fans. Even sadder than living in a country where two women being together is still a taboo concept.

After a beat, Hyejin readjusts and offers her hair for braiding and Wheein picks up where she left off, re-sectioning the hair and braiding as if nothing had happened.

---

Two months into their debut, Byul asked Yong to take a walk with her. She couldn’t quite put a finger on the multitude of feelings running amok in her ribcage, but there was one that had made itself known early on, lodging itself so firmly in her chest that the ache became a constant companion throughout the year.  

“What are you thinking about?”

Byul looked up to see Yong staring expectantly at her, cheeks tinged pink from the stiff night breeze. She bumped their shoulders together, going for an easy answer, “I’m thinking, we’ll definitely be better in our next comeback.”

“I know that...that rapping wasn’t how you saw yourself debuting.” Yong had that kind, motherly tone she would use whenever Hyejin or Wheein felt down or unmotivated after a long day, “but I want you to know that I’m glad you pursued it anyway. I feel like with you as our main rapper, MAMAMOO will really have--”

“It’s okay.” She didn’t mean to cut Yong off like that, but even after months of preparing to be a main rapper, the topic still hit a sore spot. She decided to change the topic. “I wanted to ask how you were feeling.”

“So scared!” The arm that was linked through Byul’s suddenly tightened, “We’ve worked so long for this and now suddenly everything feels like a dream but also too real at the same time. Am I making sense?”

Byul nodded.

“I just don’t want to let anyone down.” Yong’s voice lowered to almost a whisper, the corners of her pretty mouth pulling down. “I’m not used to being a leader yet and I know I still have a long way to go.”

“Unnie, you could never let us down.”

“Ah, you don’t know that Byul-ah! We’re literally coming from nothing and all we have to go on are our talents. Our agency isn’t that big and no one’s paying attention to us yet so we have to work three times as hard to get noticed and our concept isn’t even--”

She hadn’t realized she had placed a hand over the older girl’s mouth until they were already face to face, staring at each other in silence. Yong’s eyes were staring widely at her in surprise; all of a sudden Byul couldn’t hear much past the pounding of her heart against her ribcage.

“You’ll be the best leader Unnie, I know this because I know you. Me and Hyejin and Wheein, we tease you, but deep down we know you’re the best person to be our leader.”

Yong nodded slowly before taking the hand that was covering and holding it between them instead.

“You’d really follow me?”

“I’d follow you anywhere.”

It felt like the words just slipped past her lips without her brain giving it so much as a passing wave. They came out too quickly, with too much intensity and Byul felt hot and cold at the same time, waiting to see how Yong would respond.

On any other day, this wouldn’t be new territory to them. Byul liked to tease the older girl every chance she got, flinging compliment after greasy compliment just to see the familiar flash of pink creep up Yong’s neck. This, however, was different.

They knew each other too well now, could decipher each other’s thoughts and feelings with just a glance. Yong knew that if Byul started getting a little too quiet, that meant the younger girl was slipping into her frequent bouts of ennui. Byul knew that when that imperceptible furrow appeared on Yong’s brow, that she was starting to grow frustrated with herself. Yong knew when Byul was teasing and Byul knew exactly how she felt about the girl in front of her.

Now, Yong did too.

The silence extended for a beat too long, and Byul was ready to backpedal with a quick whip and a sheepish joke. That was, until Yong closed the distance between them, pressing their lips together just long enough for Byul to know that she would love Kim Yongsun until the end of her days.

When they parted, there was a sad smile on Yong’s face and a few errant tears streaming down her cheeks. The familiar sting behind her eyes told Byul that she was probably tearing up too.

As they walked back to Yong’s apartment, their hands between them not quite touching, the dull ache in her chest throbbed along to the pounding of her heart.

---

When they finally disembark from the flight back from Bangkok, Hyejin feels a sharp craving for something deep fried and smothered in truffle oil. She is in the process of trying to remember what food was left over at her apartment when--

“Alright, your cars are waiting in the parking lot to take everyone home. Then tomorrow you will all be picked up at 6am for the White Wind recording session in the morning and then rehearsals until 9pm. Clear?”

Their manager is reading something off her phone in one hand while juggling all of their passports in the other. The sight is nothing short of impressive.

“Yeah!” despite having little to no sleep, and slightly wobbly on her feet, Wheein’s cheer still echoes through the mostly empty arrival hall. Hyejin loops her arm through her best friend’s and grins. Sometimes the only way any of them can combat the fatigue of their day to day lives is just by cheering it on.

“Come over tonight, Unnie isn’t home and you can sleep over.”

Since Yongsun and Byulyi are walking a few steps behind her, Hyejin can’t help but overhear her two unnies’ conversation.

“Ok, but I need to pass by my apartment first to switch off some of my clothes.”

“We can have the car drop us off at my place then I can drive you to yours, we can grab some dinner at that samgyup place down the road, then head back home.”

“Aiyah, that’s so complicated. Let’s just have the car stop at my place first, wait while I pack an overnight bag, then we head to yours. Then for dinner we can walk to the noodle place across the street.”

“I wanted samgyupsal though!”

“You’re a troublesome yeba. How about that samgyup place a block away?”

“Ah ok! That works for me.”

On a normal day, Hyejin would have zoned out on the conversation immediately, but something about it feels familiar to her, almost like a sense of déjà vu. She shakes off the feeling after a while and has forgotten about it entirely until she reaches her apartment. As she haphazardly pushes her luggage towards her closet, it rolls a little too close to one of her shelves, disturbing a framed photo of her and her parents.

Going to set the photo right, Byulyi and Yongsun’s conversation replays itself in her mind, and she realizes why it sounded so familiar.

They sounded exactly like how her parents would speak to one another, domestic and affectionate.

---

The next day Yong couldn’t help but avoid Byul’s gaze, going through practice sessions without so much as sparing her best friend a single glance. She barely got a wink of sleep after heading home last night, replaying every second over in her head, the talk, the confession, the kiss.

She was pretty sure she was two seconds away from an anxiety attack when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Byul, of course. They two stared at each other for a moment that stretched into an eternity, before Yong nodded and led both of them into one of the more private meeting rooms down the hall.

Once the door closed behind Byul, Yong took a moment to steel herself. This whole situation suddenly reminding her of the night they first became friends.

“Byul, about last night”

“Yeah. I've been thinking about that too.”

For the first time that day, Yong turned around to look the other girl in the eyes, the sight making a familiar grip around her heart grow tighter. A feeling she’s lived with for almost two years now. “What...what do we do now?”

Byul doesn’t miss a beat, “Nothing”

That caught her off-guard, Yong stared at her incredulously “Nothing?”

Byul shrugged in that off-handed way of hers, one corner of turning up into a smirk as she walked closer to cup Yong’s cheek with her hand. Still, when Yong looked up to meet Byul's eyes, she saw that they were sad.

“Yes.” Byul continued, “Nothing--nothing has changed between us Yong. Last night, and the way that I feel about you, that hasn’t changed anything. We’re best friends first, right?”

Yong felt the tears spring to her eyes. Best friends. Feelings and memories swirled in her mind, Byul at the forefront of all of them. Her reply comes out a little strained but she knew she needed to say it out loud too. “Yes, best friends.”

It was a painful thing to realize that she wanted more, more than just being best friends with Byul. She wanted that vice-like grip around her heart and the lump in . She wanted it forever but she could never have it. Instead she stepped forward to lean her head on Byul's shoulder, at the same time, she felt the other girl press a cheek against her hair.

Outside, they heard the muffled voice of a staff member looking for them.

Byul took a few steps away from her, Yong tried not to focus on how the movement looks way too hesitant. “Shall we go?”

Yong took a deep breath, blinking a few times until her tears disappeared, until she could manage a believable smile. “Let’s go.”

---

It’s the day they’re meant to leave for Singapore, the last leg of their South East Asia fanmeets. At the moment, Jung Wheein is having the time of her life, her phone secretly pointed at their manager as she gives a few last minute reminders about their flight and hotel rooms. The facial recognition filter making their manager look like she’s mutating into a lizard.

Over her shoulder, she can hear Hyejin chuckling softly. Wheein chances a glance at her and winks. This is going to be a hit in their secret members-only group chat later.

Across from the two of them, Byul suddenly looks up from her phone, her eye darting towards the door. As if on cue, Yongsun walks in, confident as you please, hair extensions off for the flight.

Wheein watches their leader greet their manager and the staff before gravitating immediately towards Byul. Still looking on as Byul gives the older girl a quiet smile, a tender smile. Yong’s expression is affectionate and teasing and soft all at once and Wheein knows that her unnies have been looking at each other that way for years.

“Hi Byul,” Yong says, her voice almost a whisper, like a secret, like it’s something just for the two of them.

Byul stands up, arm already worming its way around Yong’s own. “About time you got here.”

Wheein puts her phone away, catching Hyejin’s eye and shrugging before making their way towards the cars.

Long ago, the two of them made an unspoken pact, that they would protect their group, their unnies, and each other. And the best way to protect what their unnies have was to never talk about it.

End