SeulRene, character-based emotional waffle, 2230 words

It’s that bitter teething of cold which lets Joohyun know Autumn is sailing into Winter. Stepping outside of the training centre, she noticed avidly that her delicate boot slipped across the tiles, tiles which were not soaking with murky rain but sheened clearly with frost. The wind filtered calmly, but with enough concentration to set her cheeks in a state of raw and her ears pressured, coated by cold airstream and pounding, signalling with a hint of blood at the back of her tastebuds. The ache and sting of cold which battled with her nostrils gave her this feeling of breathlessness. It stung as much as the breathlessness that digested all of her senses whenever she encountered Seulgi.

The atmosphere looked muddy, misty enough to swallow her up. Delicate boots branching from her delicate frame paced forwards as her eyelids fluttered more shut, each hanging with the damp and crusty kiss missed sleep bestowed upon her; her back yearned, yearned for support, only the slightest bit content with the thick purple sweater hugging onto her small back.

She wondered how Seulgi always tore into her mind. She wondered why it had to be so, why it had to be her, why it wouldn’t go away.

Remembering Seulgi’s wrinkled, crescent eyes and the escaping of her upper lip as her teeth shone across her entire face just at the mere presence of mist startled her more than a bit.

Joohyun doesn’t know when exactly it happened, but her brain teases affirmative that it did. It could have been at the warm smile she received seconds in, seconds into seeing this younger girl rip apart her everything in order to show that she wanted this. The training room hung in steam and her bear-like, petite eyes lay shrouded by deprivation but burning, burning, blinking, branding with desire.
She was but a girl with the heaviest eyelashes and the constant vibe of temperateness. She was warm, keen. She was eager to understand people. Ever accompanied by glistening sweat on her forehead, bruise marks across her knees and ignored sprains within her sharp wrists.
Joohyun had actually peered through the practise room long before she met her, fond and well managed eyebrows quirking to see this fifteen year old girl who had no other care or goal blinking and branding within her mind but that of performing. This little, scared girl who had had to grow up far too fast.
Within their first meeting, Joohyun felt compassion, and she labelled her breathlessness as being due to the harshness of the situation she had just let herself become enveloped by. Besides, Seulgi was only young – the older girl’s heart had instantly throbbed with the overwhelming desire to take care of her.
Seulgi grinned plentifully, speaking in such a soothing tone. “It’s nice to meet you.” Her bow was restricted and formal, scored down to bare simplicity, but Joohyun still found her endearing. It was as if a friendly buzz and warmth hummed through her skin and surrounded her in a bright amber canopy.

Everything about her shattered what Joohyun had tried furtively to construct.

Joohyun had built herself up in a way that let her be convinced that she would be able to withstand anything, as long as she could sustain a maintained, emotionless demeanour. She built herself up in a way so solitary and a way so enigmatic; running across her came echoes: for all what was worth, do not let anyone in. That person will be torn apart soon enough and you will have to watch them, and you will have to try not to care.
It’s bittersweet.
Training is nowhere near as glamourous as it is scratched out to be, and what it is scratched out to be is flaming imprisonment dappled only with the youthful passion of wanting to fulfil something. Training is far worse. It is the very core of Make Or Break. So close to your own heart’s core that any sour move can break you into nothing, erode you.

For as long as the angelic, quiet, innerly very childlike girl restored her bulletproof shell, Joohyun was incredibly unused to people understanding her.

Autumn had appeared in a burst, crossing over Summer with indented tracks.

“Unnie, I like your coat,” Seulgi had told her with the most restored and laidback tone of hers one day, in which they graced an airport and Sooyoung had run ahead with Seungwan. Joohyun – Irene’s – coat blinked out in a sharp red, but a long red, a red that covered all the way up to her fingertips. Perhaps the burning strength of the colour could detract from the affirmative breathlessness. “It’s really cute how it looks a bit too big.”
“Thank you, Seulgi.” Joohyun chuckled without a fraction of restraint, yet after a pause. Her replies were never instant, and by the calming pools the younger and ever-comforting girl bore into her, Seulgi definitely understood this.
“You’re generally just really cute.” Kang Seulgi hushed again, nonchalantly wrapping angelic fingers further around their conjoined wrists, where Joohyun didn’t even realise she was clasping the other girl. Force of habit. Seulgi’s soothing words became drawling and extensive, and her eyes were so affected by her enchanting smile they might as well have just been replaced by long, black lines.
Joohyun was glad her skin was perfect enough to only allow a dusting of a blush when even canons fired within her chest. The only thing, the only severed detail Seulgi didn’t quite grasp about Joohyun, was how she effortlessly made her feel.

Seungwan’s first birthday living in a dorm of four had passed months beforehand, and each girl had been gathered around the wooden rim of her mattress frame in the morning where the birthday girl slumbered across, duvet-clad, the other three with petite yet touching parcels and envelopes in each of their grips.
A calming amber lapped through the drawn window blinds, and Joohyun appreciated it. However, the conditions felt uneasy, as the other members were unable to read Seungwan’s expression, and that had never happened before. “I feel bad.” The chirpiest and loudest of the lot muttered, concerningly out of character. Sooyoung drew in her bottom lip, tilting her head like a stray puppy.
“Why?” Joohyun cooed in such a gentle tone that it flew ever so softly against Seungwan’s face and lightly scrunched her wide, alive eyes.
Seungwan turned towards Seulgi then in a way that made her seem absorbed; Joohyun did not blame her, the slightly older of the eleven-day-twins did indeed have that charm which helplessly drew you in. Seungwan puffed out her cheeks, and sighed generously, “We didn’t get to do this for Seulgi’s birthday.”

Seulgi’s face fell for only the slightest millisecond, before her keen grin and soft eyes were restored. “We were promoting then, it’s totally understandable – I really didn’t mind.” It was terrifying how easily she could glaze over any possible negativities. Joohyun had known her the longest, and Joohyun was the only one who had ever properly seen Seulgi break down – it shattered her most feeble core to register what had so crisply happened again. Make Or Break, Make Or Break.
“But I still feel guilty.” Seungwan looked incredibly deflated. Yet now, Joohyun could then only address herself into particles of the situation and conversations while the sting of Seulgi’s sore eyes and broken wails soaked through her skin like a bitter wind.
It was a memory that never could be properly supressed. The type of swollen waterlines which drew across Seulgi’s refined face had appeared in messy blotches, as if scribbled harshly over with red chalk, streams of salt trickling out of her eyes. Joohyun had never seen dark eyes this dark, or the ever rekindled flame out of order, and it shattered her, too.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” Seulgi had repeated, mumbling with a drowned voice into her folded knees while allowing herself to nervously rock, desperately ignoring her own reflection in the practise room mirror.
She could feel it shredding her up. Canons.
Joohyun realised here how Seulgi had buried herself into Joohyun’s protective bubble that she built up only for herself. For once in her confined life, Joohyun did not mind; Joohyun wanted to take care of the girl, she did not mind.
The reaction could have been maternal, or breathlessly something else. She tracked the tuft of a white, pastel polka-dot blanket from Seulgi’s thick training bag, drawing it out like a web, instinctively burying Seulgi with it and pressing upon her shivering shoulders with the firmest hands.
Sixteen year old Seulgi looked like a child for the first time within the year Joohyun had known her. Her small, ever-angelic fingers clasped at the hem of the blanket the older girl had covered over her, the touch unusually cold and quivering. “You don’t have to stay. Please, just ignore me, I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Those words were what shattered Joohyun’s frosted demeanour the most, and without halt, pouring through her icy demeanour came her real self.
The pureness of Seulgi’s lifelong hunt for positivity and the reality of it being constantly battered into rubble was what made Joohyun cry for her, was what made her kneel beside her and cry with her, was what made her thoughtlessly rush into a tight embrace and whisper senselessly that things would be alright.

The further from the centre Joohyun paced, the slipperier the subtly frosted tiles became.

She’s too strong, Joohyun would think in the early months of their debut, and it was a thought which patterned and ornamented all she had ever thought since meeting this warm girl who had definitely grown up far too quickly. She sees negativity as her own weakness and desperately blocks off the fact that she’s sensitive, and dear God, she’s too strong.

“Unnie.” Joohyun could hear only fractals while the bleeding of wind pressure cut the circulation out of her ears.

“Unnie?”

“Joohyun unnie.” The tiles were now remarkably slippery, and Bae Joohyun could hardly see her boots as she attempted to get her petite eyes to adjust to the mist she had let herself become shrouded by. After a moment or two of collecting the random, blinking sounds she heard in the distance behind her, she turned, startled to see that the voice’s possessor only existed a few paces away.
“Seulgi?” Joohyun adjusted her vision, so breathless she thought she could faint – bitter winds and Seulgi combined… perhaps fatal.

Kang Seulgi obviously seemed as if she had a thought tingling across her tongue, but half way between positioning herself to speak, her enticing eyes widened with genuine worry; “Are you alright?”

Joohyun paced backwards a bit as gusts of frost dampened her sensitive skin, being sure not to slip. “Yes, y-yes. What do you mean?”

It was Seulgi who seized her wrist, who wrapped her angelic fingers around it, who drew her crimson cable-knit scarf from her own neck in order to support Joohyun’s dazed and wind-burned face with it. Concern stabilising the tips of her eyelashes, she ran her fingers along the bottom of Joohyun’s soft eyes, wiping off gushes of tears the older girl unfortunately did not realise were there.

They stayed within that position for a spared and flowing moment, where the icy breeze would have usually cut into Joohyun’s skin but instead ignored her whole body, what with Seulgi’s presence intact. Her unspoken devotion flitted through the air. She wondered if within the hurtling drafts, Seulgi could feel it too.

Joohyun hesitated to ask, but let the softest whisper grace through her stunning lips. “So why did you come?” Accompanied by thick gale, she very much did not suppose Seulgi would hear her.
But indeed, as always, she did. “You dropped your gloves.” Her breath was warm against Joohyun’s face. She always had this comforting scent of musk surrounding her, the type that Joohyun became captured by.
Blinking, blinking, blinking again, Joohyun came back to her senses. Her wide eyes lay in a squint. “I didn’t bring gloves.”
Seulgi’s nostrils blew calm wisps of frost, and her bright eyes were still easily visible even masked by fog. Joohyun really could not breathe. “Of course you didn’t…” It was the dejected sound of understanding what worried her, but knowing a person so well she ceased to do anything about it. Heaving within herself, Seulgi took her heated fingertips from Irene’s face and settled them on her shoulders, instinctively doing all she could to block this older girl from the cold. “I wanted to say thank you.”
Joohyun – Irene – knew very much well enough, throughout the training years, what being swallowed by coldness was.
“For what?” She hushed, whispers devoted and whispers breathless.

There was a fleeting twinkle in Seulgi’s eyes, and her smile had reduced. This was Kang Seulgi without the glaze of positivity and the hum of amber she constantly made herself radiate. “For letting me understand you.”

It was difficult to respond, so Joohyun did not, and Seulgi knew she would not. Instead, Joohyun batted at Seulgi’s warm hands, dragging her sharp yet delicate body forth and immersing so fully into an embrace that it made her feel absorbed. Seulgi pressed her generous lips to Joohyun’s harshly freezing yet divinely soft temple; comfortable musk took over the sharp sting of cold.

It was the best type of breathlessness.