Minjeong’s phone rang as the final chord of their song faded to silence. Nobody could have missed it, which made her intentions very obvious when she immediately called for them to take five.

“Just leave it,” Chenle sighed more than said, refusing to even put down his bass.

“Dude, it’s the special ringtone.”

Minjeong rolled her eyes on her way to her bag. She did have a special ringtone, and this was it, but it was strictly for numbers that were actually important, like doctors, and university offices. Mark made it sound like it was for something frivolous like pretty girls or potential dates, which Minjeong would never.

Really, it was only by sheer coincidence that both conditions happened to overlap in the case of Jimin’s number. Or, well, of the shared NCT manager phone, as it had turned out to be. And she’d set the special ringtone before ever even meeting Jimin!

Still, she’d be lying if she said that she’d come running to her bag because she thought her dentist wanted to schedule an appointment.

She took out her phone and checked the notifications eagerly.

She didn’t want to text first, since it was a shared phone and all, and last time with Kim Aeri had been traumatizing enough, so she was waiting for Jimin to say something. Had been, ever since that night at the bar, and almost a week had passed since then.

She bit back a smile, thinking about that night. Any night she performed was a nice memory, but this one was already in close competition with some very good ones, because Jimin had been there, and she’d seemed so much more relaxed than when they would meet at the coffee shop. It had made Minjeong instantly glad to have invited her. Weirdly, maybe even glad that she hadn’t managed to bring Renjun after all.

As time passed, Minjeong found that she kept thinking more about Jimin and less about Renjun. He was the one who’d wanted to see the band in the first place, but not having him there was a loss that she’d barely felt.

Instead, she’d had Jimin, who played around, and welcomed her touches, and smiled back, and looked so pretty in the half-light of the bar. She always looked so pretty. Even by the end, when her eyes kept unfocusing and Aeri had to drag her home.

Minjeong had slowly come to realize that Jimin wasn’t just a pretty person that she wanted to keep seeing. She was more than that by now. Minjeong liked her, and wanted to do something about it. In fact, she’d already been doing a lot more than she usually did.

She wasn’t the straightforward type. She preferred to drop hints and let the other person take the lead. But with Jimin, the hints never seemed to work. Not the dressing up, or the compliments, or wanting to get to know her. She clearly hadn’t figured it out even when Minjeong had made it so clear that she’d dressed up on a Saturday afternoon just to meet her and waste her time having whatever paperwork business discussion SM wanted from her, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to go anywhere, because it never did.

Inviting her to see the band play might have been the first time Minjeong had ever taken the lead on something like this. And then, even more surprisingly, she’d done it again! She’d asked Jimin on a movie date, even if it was a long-distance one. A compromise, sure, but still a date! That Minjeong had asked for, despite never ever asking people out.

And then Jimin had vanished for a week.

Minjeong was honestly starting to worry that she’d been too drunk to remember it, or maybe that she hated movies so much that it won over any interest she might have had in Minjeong and made her immediately drop her. But mostly the drunk thing.

But now she’d texted, finally, so even if she didn’t remember a thing, Minjeong would have her next chance to bring something up, or drop more hints, or some secret third option that would surely come to her eventually.

She focused back on the present and the screen in front of her, and read out the new message from exactly the number she’d hoped for.

NCT Manager: Hello, this is Kim Aeri, Yu Jimin’s colleague. I wanted to inform you that all contact regarding Renjun’s situation will take place through me from now on.

It took about three rereads for the words to finally sink in. Jimin was gone?

Jimin was gone, and she hadn’t even told her herself.

Kim Aeri… She couldn’t be pranking Minjeong again, could she? Jimin had said that it wasn’t like her at all, so what were the odds of it happening twice? And this was kind of a cruel prank to play, especially after Aeri had seemed to understand the situation at the bar, maybe even better than Jimin.

She frowned down at her phone like it would provide any answers, until the guys started getting restless.

“Everything okay?” Donghyuck asked, breaking the silence that was only being filled by Chenle’s occasional passive-aggressive twang of a bass string.

“You guys, I think the spirit of rock isn’t with me anymore,” she said weakly, and dropped down to sit next to her bag.

“See, this is why I say phones off during practice,” Chenle immediately spoke up. “This isn’t the first time a practice has been completely derailed-”

“It happened once,” Mark said in the exasperated tone of someone who’d had this exact same discussion a dozen times before. “My sister was literally in labor!”

While the two bickered on, Donghyuck was the first to reach Minjeong and take a seat by her side.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Jimin,” Minjeong admitted. She dropped her phone back into the depths of her bag with sullen carelessness.

“The girl from the bar?” Chenle asked, incredulous. “Wow, special ringtone indeed. I’m glad we’re all dropping everything so Minjeong can chat up her girlfriend.”

“Don’t be such an a-word, Chenle. If you’re so bitter about Minjeong’s girlfriend, get your own.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Minjeong interrupted the second round of bickering, which at least had the positive effect of turning some of her sadness into annoyance. She was way better at dealing with annoyance.

“But she was all over you at the bar,” Mark chimed in, positive as always.

“I thought so too.”

“Well, what did she say?” Chenle asked, apparently giving up on the practice too.

“She didn’t say anything. It’s complicated…” Minjeong sighed, trying to figure out how to explain the situation with the limited information she’d shared. “Well, you know how we met because she works at SM and I ended up… involved in her work?”

“We do, although we still find that incredibly vague.”

“I still think she got kicked out of a fansign and SM wants to sue.”

“Jimin looked a little young to be on the legal team for such a big company, though.”

“Guys! Focus.” She took a deep breath. They were so annoying when they joined forces. “It doesn’t matter what she does. Except that it doesn’t involve me anymore, apparently. I got switched to someone else, and she didn’t even say anything. Aeri told me.”

“So, did she like, work-ghost you?”

“She regular-ghosted me,” Minjeong said as the realization fully sank in. Not only had Jimin blown off their movie date, not said anything about it, and now cut off the only way they still had of seeing each other – still not saying anything! -, but she was more or less impossible to contact now, because… “I never even got her actual number, just some shared work phone.”

“Oh, damn,” Mark said eloquently, “that’s rough.”

“Thanks, bro,” Minjeong replied miserably.

“No problem, bro.”

Chenle sighed. If he said anything more about practice, Minjeong was going to key his car.

“You guys want to go get ice cream?” he offered instead.

Oh. Nice.

“Yeah, what the hell, let’s go get ice cream.”

(...)

“What about Aeri?” Donghyuck asked.

“Like, hit on her instead?”

“Somebody make Chenle stop contributing to this conversation,” Minjeong requested, throwing the boy a glare before returning her attention to Donghyuck. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, she’s the one who told you. She probably knows more. You can ask her what’s up, maybe this is a misunderstanding, or Jimin just got transferred into another department or something.”

“Why don’t you just ask Aeri for Jimin’s number?”

“Chenle, I swear to god-” Minjeong began, but she was interrupted by Mark.

“No, no, he has a point.”

“I should ask for Jimin’s number,” she enunciated, letting the full insanity of the words sink in. All three boys nodded. “I should- Sure. Sure. I’ll just ask for Jimin’s number! Shall I lasso the moon for you while I’m at it?”

“It’s literally not that hard. Give me your phone, I’ll do it.”

“Over my dead body!” She wrapped protective arms around her bag before anyone could get any ideas. “Like I’m going to take relationship advice from Chenle, who’s never had a girlfriend.”

“Will you take it from me?” Mark piped up again.

“You’ve also never had a girlfriend!”

“Because he’s gay,” Donghyuck pointed out. “And he’s got a boyfriend.”

“Details.”

“Okay, so don’t ask for her number. Can you ask something else? Donghyuck was making good points.”

She poked at her ice cream wordlessly for a few moments, mulling over her options. Aeri really was the only one who could help her figure things out, but Minjeong wasn’t a fan of exposing herself like that, especially to someone who was clearly on Jimin’s corner and not hers. Then again, Aeri had seemed happy enough to push them together at the bar. So wasn’t she a little bit on Minjeong’s corner too?

Maybe if she said something ambiguous enough. She could ask if everything was okay, right? Any nice, polite person would ask, even if they didn’t care that much. It was just a question of manners, at that point.

“Okay, I’m doing it,” she gave in, throwing her spoon in her cup and reaching for her phone. “Nobody look.”

Minjeong: Thank you for letting me know. I hope the sudden change isn’t because of anything bad, is everything alright with the team?

Satisfied, she shoved her phone back in her bag and took a big bite of vanilla, nodding as if to say that the issue was dealt with for the day and they could start their usual arguments about song rankings and the best chords and whether or not ballads could have drum solos.

Her bag immediately started ringing.

“Mmllo,” she managed after a couple of seconds, phone hanging in a rushed, precarious grip and still half full of ice cream.

“Hi, Minjeong, it’s Aeri. Is this a bad time? I just figured it was easier to call, it feels kind of weird to text back and forth on the shared phone.”

“No, we can talk, what’s up?”

The guys were all staring at her, clearly invested in her love life now. She tried to shoo them away, but none of them budged, and Mark even scooted his chair a little closer, making a really disruptive scraping sound.

“Well, when I texted you, I figured you already knew what was up, but from your reply it sounds like Jimin hasn’t told you anything yet, huh?”

Minjeong offered a dry laugh, like it wasn’t a big deal that no, Jimin hadn’t said anything at all, and had just decided to drop off the face of the earth and leave Aeri to deal with her.

“Yeah, I guess not,” she said diplomatically. Something must have shown on her face, because Mark bit back a grimace like he’d just seen someone fumble a pass. “Sounds like everything’s fine, then.” Donghyuck grimaced a little too.

“Yup, nobody’s in trouble or dead in a ditch,” Aeri said with a little chuckle. “Jimin just switched to another artist’s team, so obviously Renjun’s not her responsibility anymore. She’s been really busy catching up on everything, I’m sure that’s why she hasn’t reached out yet.”

“Oh, okay. Um, that makes sense.”

“I haven’t seen her in a while myself, but if we run into each other at the company, I’ll make sure to kick her about it.”

“Oh, that’s- No kicking necessary, don’t even mention it,” Minjeong immediately replied, panicking as they veered far from the plausible deniability she was so carefully aiming at. “It’s fine, it’s understandable, you can’t make her any less busy, so…”

“Okay, I guess I can tell her to take her time, then?”

“Um…”

All things considered, Minjeong still wasn’t sure she liked Aeri. She seemed nice enough, but she kept pulling these tricks on her, and while Minjeong usually respected that in a person, it wasn’t admiration that she felt when Aeri once more called her bluff.

All that Aeri had to do was go to Jimin and tell her she should call Minjeong, but without involving Minjeong in this idea at all. Just… leave the suggestion out there, like a caring friend who had seen an injustice and wanted to right it. Instead, here she was trying to pull the words out of Minjeong, like some sort of person who thought she was so smart because she had Minjeong figured out and had all the power to give her what she wanted, but first Minjeong had to say it.

What she didn’t know, was that Minjeong would never back away from a challenge. Not even a really stupid one that worked completely against her and won her nothing.

When she’d been younger, she and her sister would compete over dinner, arguing that they could finish in six bites, then five, then four, the number dropping until Minjeong inevitably ended up at one and almost choked to death stuffing full of rice. It had taken her way too many near-death experiences to realize Taeyeon always started at an even number.

“Minjeong?” Aeri asked, probably expecting actual words.

Minjeong cleared . Donghyuck must have seen it in her face before she even spoke, because he made a very brave effort at taking away her phone, but she dodged and weaved, and the phone was still firmly hers when she gave her answer.

“That’s fine, you don’t have to say anything at all, don’t even bring me up, okay, see you when I see you.”

She hung up.

Ah, yes. The sweet taste of success. How often it was, that it seemed indistinguishable from utter failure.

Chenle threw his tiny plastic spoon into his half-empty cup and shoved it away.

“We missed practice for this,” he muttered bitterly.

(...)

Each day that passed with no word from either Aeri or Jimin plunged Minjeong’s life deeper into gloom. Not even the announcement of NCT’s upcoming comeback managed to bring up her plummeting mood, and she was almost ready to reach out to Aeri, or at the very least wait until SM set up another pointless meeting and try to ask about Jimin there.

The only thing holding her back from trying again was the stupid competitive streak that had landed her in this mess in the first place, telling her that making contact now would pretty much be grovelling, after she’d refused Aeri’s help so firmly.

She missed the simple days of choking on dinner and being done with it. This was threatening to drag on forever, while she tried to get herself to either accept the bitter lonely fate she’d brought on herself or, failing that, to toughen up and endure the humiliation that would rain down on her in the name of love and Yu Jimin’s number.

Neither possibility seemed very likely to happen any time soon, and her constant crappy mood was threatening to earn back the reputation she’d taken so long to dispel at the start of college.

Then she got a text.

Unknown number: Hey, this is Yu Jimin. My actual number this time

She stared at the words on her screen, joy bubbling up and out in a breathless giggle.

She’d done it. This was victory, unqualified success. Her stubbornness has been promoted to patience, her refusal to back down was now a wise strategy. She’d played all her cards right and gotten what she wanted without ever having to yield in her principles.

If the universe had wanted her to learn a lesson from this, it wouldn’t have handed her her prize on a silver platter. She was never going to doubt herself again.

She saved the number just in time for another message to follow, the notification further feeding her ego.

Jimin: I meant to say something sooner but I’ve kind of been swamped with work, and Aeri said she talked to you and explained everything so I could take my time

Kim Aeri was playing a very dangerous game. They’d see how brave she was when they met in person again and she was on the receiving end of one of the famous Minjeong glares.

Jimin: she also said to tell you that you reap what you sow, so I’m assuming you guys developed a fun frenemies dynamic in my absence

Three texts in a row! Minjeong dropped her grudge against Aeri for the moment, choosing instead to focus on responding to Jimin in a way that was cool yet open to flirting.

Minjeong: you’re unexpectedly a very chatty texter

Whatever. Good enough.

Jimin: I haven’t slept in eleventy hours, everything’s coming out unfiltered

Minjeong: very promising

Okay, that was better. It was definitely in the vicinity of flirting, anyway. She added something else to cover her bases.

Minjeong: but maybe you should take a nap or something?

Jimin: but I’ve come to you with a purpose!

She giggled. A purpose?

Minjeong: I love the way sleep-deprived Jimin texts

Jimin: really? I thought you’d like more stickers

Right. She’d managed to forget for one blissful moment that Jimin had seen all her texts with Renjun. She had no chance of coming across as a cool texter, after all that. She’d used and abused every sticker pack he’d sent her, and secretly hoped for more.

Minjeong: see, it looks like you’re teasing me by pointing out that you invaded my privacy and read all those messages between me and a third party, but the jimin I know would never stoop so low

There. The best defense was always a good offense.

Jimin: I told you no filter!

Minjeong: I didn’t know the real jimin was a bully all along

Minjeong: I’m just kidding by the way

Jimin: oh I know. You’re a master manipulator

Minjeong let out a surprised laugh. She was a what? She couldn’t wait to get into that, but for now she was a little too curious about why exactly Jimin had finally reached out, and a little too hopeful that it was to say yes to that movie date.

Minjeong: okay well you’ve forgotten your purpose

Jimin: … Is that you, father?

Was that a Lion King reference? Minjeong needed to get Jimin watching some movies from the current century, soon.

Minjeong: you said you came to me with a purpose

Jimin: ah! Good catch! Someone’s paying attention

Now unfiltered Jimin was starting to sound like drunk Jimin. Minjeong grinned at her phone as she composed her answer.

Minjeong: do I get a gold star?

Jimin: that sounds like something yizhuo would say

Jimin: she’s the girl I’m managing now. She hasn’t debuted yet and she is very eager

Yizhuo? Ning Yizhuo? The SM rookie that all the insiders agreed would definitely debut before the end of the year? Minjeong couldn’t call herself a fan or anything, but she still kept up with the gossip, and she was as curious as everyone else about her upcoming debut. It wasn’t even confirmed whether she was a solo artist, but if Jimin was managing her – just her -, then wasn’t that more or less implied?

Minjeong: you’re working with ningning?! Is she debuting?

Jimin: goddddd no work talk please

Right. That was fair. But still…

Minjeong: you brought her up first

Some added comment like ‘should I be jealous’ hung temptingly on the tips of her fingers, but she decided against it. It was too straightforward, and she didn’t want to take the first step towards outright flirting.

Jimin: are you jealous?

Wow. Never mind, then. Minjeong could work with this.

Jimin: are you going to be all over me about ningning now?

Oh, boo. Not flirting, just plain old-fashioned teasing of the idol fan. In that case, she’d rather get them back on track.

Minjeong: again, you brought her up first. I’m just trying to figure out what this purpose was

Jimin: good catch!

Minjeong: that’s what you keep saying. I thought the eleventy hours thing was hyperbole, on account of it being a made-up word and all, but maybe it really is accurate

Jimin: I did say I’ve been busy

Jimin: but I have a couple hours free on thursday afternoon. I was thinking about that movie streaming idea you had

Yes! Finally, it was really happening!

Although Jimin was calling it an ‘idea’, which sounded less like a date and more like a business strategy Minjeong had proposed at a company meeting. Had Minjeong not made it clear enough that it was a date?

She should play it cool.

Minjeong: you say that like I cornered the market

Too cool! That just sounded like she was blowing Jimin off!

Minjeong: but what kind of thinking were you doing?

There was a long pause and Minjeong started to worry that Jimin had given up on the conversation. She was a busy woman and Minjeong wasn’t giving her anything.

Visions of choking on dinner with her sister floated back into her mind with ominous foreboding. She wasn’t sure she was up for another round of tug-of-war with herself, if this conversation didn’t turn into an actual established date.

She vaguely wondered if she could blame Taeyeon’s teenage antagonism for how she’d turned out. Would she be easier to handle if she’d been an only child?

Probably not.

Jimin: to do it? On thursday afternoon. When I’m free. If you’re also free on thursday afternoon

She almost dropped her phone in her rush to answer.

Minjeong: I didn’t have anything planned, no

In her mind, she was already moving things around to match whatever time slot Jimin had. She was pretty sure she had a meet-up for a group project that day but whatever, she’d fake a cold and message them from her room.

Jimin: ok, see you then

Jimin: well, not see you

Jimin: you know what I mean

Jimin: I have to go now

Minjeong read over the four messages sent in quick succession, quirking her head with a little smile as she absently sent a waving puppy sticker.

“Cute.”

(...)

As it turned out, Jimin spent most of her time at the company since she’d started managing Ning Yizhuo. Without events to attend, her team just needed to be present at a lot of meetings and the girl to her classes to, as Jimin put it, make sure she didn’t run off and join the circus.

It would all change soon, when the debut preparations began. Then, Jimin would be traveling around to all of Yizhuo’s pre-debut schedules, and escorting her throughout the month or so she’d probably spend promoting on music shows. This was the calm before the storm, the rare time of peace after she’d caught up with the new team but before the real work began.

And, as it turned out, she was spending that peaceful time at the company.