There are two new girls this year. One is young – five years younger than Irene – but taller than her already, round-cheeked and sweet-looking. The other one, shorter and tanner, is rather famous already. Irene’s heard rumours that she can play four instruments, that she’s from overseas and has a voice that can threaten Seulgi, who sits firmly at the top of the vocal pyramid.

“Hi, I’m Seulgi. Kang Seulgi. A lot of people call me KkangSeul.” Seulgi is, to no one’s surprise, the first one to greet the new girls. She’s already hit it off with Park Sooyoung, so now she’s onto the other one. “What’s your name?”

“Wendy.”

“Wendy,” Seulgi repeats. “Like from Peter Pan?”

Wendy smiles. She has a nice smile. “Yeah, except I have to grow up.”

Seulgi smiles back. Irene can tell she’s warming up to Wendy already. Then again, it doesn’t take Seulgi much to warm up to people. They call her a teddy bear for a reason.

“Are you American?” Seulgi asks brightly. “You look kind of American.”

Wendy looks as Korean as anyone else to Irene, but she isn’t going to question Seulgi. That doesn’t get her anywhere.

“Canadian, actually,” Wendy replies.

“Oh, like Henry sunbaenim!” Seulgi exclaims, and then she and Wendy are engaged in a conversation about Canada and violins and what have you.

Irene turns away, disinterested. She’ll introduce herself later for the sake of being polite – knowing Seulgi, she’ll probably shove Irene in front of Wendy and tell them to be friends, so Irene will have to take a pre-emptive strike – but meanwhile she has vocal practice to get to.

 

Irene walks out of the recording studio thinking about bubble tea. She can’t decide between original and strawberry. Then again, she hasn’t had taro in a while…

“Hi,” an unfamiliar voice says brightly.

Irene snaps out of thoughts of tapioca vs. jelly to see tan new girl – Wendy, she corrects – smiling at her.

“Hi,” she returns quietly.

Wendy actually sinks into a bow. Irene knows that foreigners have a tendency to either disregard formalities (not out of disrespect but because they simply don’t know any better) or take them very seriously (because it’s better to be too polite than not polite enough). Wendy seems to be of the latter group.

“I’m Wendy. Wendy Son.”

Wendy sticks out her hand, and Irene takes it, shaking it for the quickest of moments. She’s not the biggest fan of skinship or small talk.

“I’m Bae Joohyun, but I go by Irene.”

“Irene,” Wendy repeats, pronouncing it differently – well, Irene is an English name, after all – from everyone else. “Irene unnie,” she corrects herself. “Sorry.”

“How old are you?”

“I was born in ’94, like Seulgi.”

“Oh.” Wendy seems nice and all, but Irene is already thinking about her bubble tea, and she wonders how she can end the conversation without being too rude. “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” she says, politely and pointedly.

Wendy’s face seems to fall a little, but then she smiles. “You too,” she says, sounding very sincere. “I’ll see you around.”

Irene nods and puts her earbuds in before walking away. She feels like strawberry bubble tea with extra tapioca today.

 

“So Wendy’s super cool,” Seulgi says to Irene for probably the twelfth time. Irene’s stopped counting. “Did you know she plays the saxophone? She plays a lot of instruments.”

Irene brushes her sweaty bangs away from her face. “I thought we came here to practice dancing.”

“What, I can’t talk about my new friend at the same time?”

Irene wishes she asked someone else to dance with. However, Seulgi is one of the best dancers around and her best friend, so…

“Joy is great too, she—”

Irene gives her a blank look. “Joy?”

“Park Sooyoung,” Seulgi says with an airy wave of her wrist, like Irene is supposed to know all this already. “S.M. gave her a stage name.”

“Already? That was fast.”

“I bet they like her. She looks kind of like Suzy sunbaenim, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Irene says absently.

“Oi, Joohyun, you’re being very quiet today even for your normal standards.”

“Unnie,” Irene corrects, not really caring too much.

“You don’t have to call me unnie.”

Irene rolls her eyes. “You always lift your leg too high for this part,” she says, demonstrating the correct height to perform the movement.

“You spin too fast in the move right before the bridge.”

“I know.” She frowns. “I’ve been working on it, but I can’t get the speed perfect.”

“Don’t worry, Baechu. I’m here to help you.”

Irene sighs. “Remind me why we’re friends again.”

Seulgi sticks out her tongue. “Because you love me and you can’t resist me. Hey, where are you going? I thought we were dancing!”

 

There are bound to be cliques in trainee groups, unless you’re Kang Seulgi and you’re friends with everyone. Irene’s pretty sure Seulgi could have a comfortable, ten-minute conversation with any of the trainees. (Then again, Seulgi could spend ten minutes talking about kimbap and somehow make it sound fascinating.)

Irene and Seulgi are kind of their own thing though. They practice dancing together (Irene is a little better, but Seulgi has her own way of moving that’s mesmerizing nonetheless), catch the subway together (Irene has a tendency to daydream, and Seulgi to chatter on, but somehow, they never miss a stop), and get bubble tea together (Seulgi always likes to get red bean instead of tapioca or jelly, which Irene finds weird, but then again, when doesn’t she find Seulgi weird?).

She likes Seulgi a lot. She considers Seulgi her best friend, and sometimes she wonders if she’s Seulgi’s, because Seulgi seems to be friendly with everyone, but when she hesitantly asked her that one day, Seulgi literally laughed in her face and told her, “Sure, I’m friendly with people, but that doesn’t mean I’m friends with them. You’re my best friend.”

Not a lot of people get to see one of Irene’s real smiles, but Seulgi has never been a lot of people. She sees – makes – Irene smile a lot. Irene may not say it very often, but she’s very grateful for Seulgi, and she knows that Seulgi knows that, and it’s enough.

 

Irene’s pretty. It’s something she’s always known. She’s a good dancer and not a bad rapper, but she knows those are not the reasons why S.M. accepted her so readily. She’s pretty, and she knows it, but that doesn’t mean she slacks off in training because of it.

Her voice is decent enough, but she’s never going to be at Seulgi’s level, so she keeps practicing. Her dancing is really quite great – the dance instructors rarely need to show her things more than a few times – but that just means she gets the more challenging routines, so she keeps practicing. Her rapping isn’t going to bring the roof down, but she won’t let it bring her future group down either, so she keeps practicing.

She keeps practicing.

People could say what they want about S.M., about looks over talent. She won’t let it apply to her too. She won’t be just a pretty face.

She keeps practicing.

 

Seulgi is becoming closer with Wendy and Joy, especially Wendy, who is the same age as her and whose Canadian multi-instrumentalism she finds very cool. Irene felt threatened, briefly, but of course Seulgi saw through it and laughed at her again, and she was left reassured.

And of course Seulgi, being Seulgi, wants them all to be BFFs and is constantly trying to get Irene to talk to the other two more.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to, per se, but she doesn’t particularly want to either. She’s never really liked talking, or at least talking for the sake of talking. And the other three all seem to be very fond of talking.

She’s content enough to listen to the three of them chat and occasionally join in. Joy seemed rather intimidated by her at first, but she’s warmed up to Irene quickly and has a knack for knowing when she wants to talk or not.

Wendy, on the other hand, is… Irene doesn’t want to call her a bother, exactly, but she keeps vying for Irene’s attention in a way that makes her rather uncomfortable. She doesn’t like idle chatter, and she doesn’t want to talk all the time, and Wendy doesn’t seem to understand that.

What makes it worse is that Wendy is so genuinely nice and friendly and well-meaning that Irene can’t even get annoyed at her for it. Well, she gets annoyed at times, and then she feels bad for being annoyed, especially when faced with that bright smile again.

She thinks that Seulgi will talk to Wendy about it – Seulgi is kind of like Irene’s microphone – but she underestimated the part of Seulgi that loves watching her squirm. Seulgi says nothing, clearly wanting Irene to talk for herself.

Irene says nothing.

 

Seulgi is crazy. Irene’s known that for a long time, but she’s still struck in the face by just how crazy Seulgi is sometimes.

Right now there are four of them in a practice room – Irene, Seulgi, Wendy, and Joy – and Seulgi is telling everyone to pick their favourite Pokémon so they can have a Pokémon imitation battle.

“And you have to say it the way they say it in the show,” Seulgi insists. “Like, for me – Pikachu, I choose you!” She dances to the middle of the room and strikes a pose, puffing her cheeks out.

Irene buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know you,” she says, muffled into her palms.

“Come on, Baechu!” Seulgi yells. “You can be Bulbasaur – he looks like he has a lettuce on his back!”

“I don’t know you,” Irene repeats, a little louder.

Seulgi has managed to drag Joy into it. “Can’t I just be Nurse Joy?” she asks plaintively.

“Hey, that could work,” Seulgi agrees. “Baechu, you could be Chansey, then. You like pink, don’t you?”

Irene takes her hands away from her face so she can glare at Seulgi. She sees Joy looking a little intimidated – she’s been told her glares are frightening, although they just look silly in the mirror – but the expression has no effect on Seulgi.

“I don’t know you,” Irene says for the third time.

Beside her, Wendy is laughing.

 

“Hi, unnie!” Joy waves to her. “I’m late for Japanese lessons. Bye, unnie!”

Irene watches her run off with some amusement and a brief pang of envy at the length of her legs. Both Seulgi and Joy are taller than her.

“She’s great, isn’t she?”

Half-startled, Irene looks over to see Wendy. “Joy?”

“Yeah, she really is a joy.” Wendy makes a face. “Okay, that sounded a lot better in my head.”

Irene smiles a little. “Maybe in English.”

“S.M. is still making me take English lessons.” Wendy sticks out her tongue. “I speak much better English than the guy who teaches it.”

“Yes, Seulgi’s told me.”

“She has?”

Irene shrugs. “Seulgi talks about you a lot.”

There’s a long stretch of silence between them. Irene gives Wendy a questioning look when it seems that she isn’t going to say anything.

Wendy clears . “It must annoy you.”

“Seulgi’s endless talking? It’s not that bad. I’m used to it.”

“No, her talking about me,” Wendy says quietly.

Irene takes a moment to choose her words. “That doesn’t bother me any more than her other topics.”

Wendy bites her lip and lowers her lashes. “I thought you didn’t like me,” she admits quietly.

Ah, there it is. She can’t say she didn’t see it coming.

“I don’t dislike you,” Irene says, which is the perfect truth. “I just – I don’t really like talking.”

Wendy is still looking at the ground instead of at Irene. She’s usually so cheerful and outgoing that it’s strange to see her acting like this.

“I know I’m bugging you all the time, and I’m sorry. It’s just—” Wendy breaks off in the middle of her sentence, and Irene waits patiently for her to continue. “I want us to be friends, and I don’t know how to make that happen. I thought that if I talked to you more, you would like me, but it seems to be having the opposite effect.”

Oh, Wendy. Irene can’t help a smile. Wendy, eyes still trained downwards, doesn’t see it.

She puts a hand on Wendy’s shoulder so she would look up. “I know I come off as cold,” Irene says slowly. “I probably seem very—unapproachable. But you can talk to me.”

The look Wendy gives her clearly spells out yeah, like that’s worked out so well. Wendy has a very expressive face; even her eyebrows seem to speak.

Irene smiles again. “From now on, you can talk to me, okay?” Wendy gives a small nod. “And, maybe, you know…”

“I’ll lay off,” Wendy promises. “I’m just not very good at—telling.”

“You could ask Joy,” Irene says offhandedly.

Wendy gives her a strangely unhappy look. “I asked Seulgi, but she just told me to talk to you.”

Irene chuckles. “That sounds like Seulgi.”

“What sounds like me?” Speak of the Devil. “Pure Awesome?”

Irene and Wendy exchange a look. Well, Irene gives a look, and Wendy gives about five looks. Her face seems to change expression every other second. It’s strangely endearing.

“Why don’t you find someone else to electrocute, PikaSeul?” Irene says dryly.

“Hey, you should be nicer to your best friend.” Seulgi turns to Wendy with an exaggerated pout. “Don’t I get a thank you for this?”

Wendy arches her eyebrows. “For what?”

“Look at you and Baechu all happy and talky together. It’s obviously thanks to me.”

“Thanks to you,” Irene snorts. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I practically did everything! I am Kang Seulgi, the all-mighty, all-knowing—”

“Hey, Wendy,” Irene says. “Do you want to get some bubble tea?”

Wendy smiles. She really does have a nice smile. “Sure.”

 

There is a group of tall, lanky boys in front of them in line, blocking the menus. Wendy has to stand on her tip-toes to look at it, and she keeps craning her neck from left to right as the people in front of her shift. Irene knows what she wants already, so she just watches Wendy move like she’s trying to imitate a bobble-head doll.

“Their original milk tea is really good,” Irene offers.

“I usually get that,” Wendy explains, “so this time I want to get something different.”

Irene watches her darting neck movements with wry amusement. “Whiplash?”

Wendy gives her a pout of a look. Her expression turns wistful when she looks around the store, eyes clouded over with what Irene recognizes as nostalgia. The line shifts, and Irene has to nudge her to get her to move along with it.

Irene feels obligated to ask, “What is it?”

“They have this chain at home too,” Wendy says quietly. “My friends and I used to go all the time after school.”

Irene knows all too well what it’s like to be homesick, but she can’t imagine what it’s like for your home to be halfway across the world. She came to Seoul on the wings of a dream, and she doesn’t regret it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“Maybe Korea can become your home one day.”

Wendy looks at her for a long moment before she breaks into a smile. “I think I’ll get the matcha red bean smoothie. It’s been a while since I’ve had that.”

“Same here.” Irene really likes that flavour. “It’s great.”

It’s Wendy’s turn in line, and she orders two large matcha red bean smoothies.

Irene starts. “You don’t have to—”

“What topping do you want?”

“Wendy, you really don’t have to.”

“I know that.” Wendy smiles. “I want to.”

Irene hesitates.

“What topping do you want?” Wendy repeats.

“I’ll—try the rainbow jelly.” Irene likes to stick to old favourites most of the time, but today she feels open to something new.

Wendy turns to the cashier. “Two large matcha red bean smoothies with rainbow jelly.”

They take their drinks to a corner table. Irene gets her straw in on her first try. Wendy needs two, splashing smoothie onto the lid that she off. By the face she makes, she clearly likes the taste of it.

“What?” she asks Irene, who realizes that she’s smiling.

Irene stirs her straw. “You make a lot of faces.”

“I—” Wendy smiles self-consciously. “I’ve been told that.”

“Don’t worry, it’s cute.”

Wendy ducks her head, wiping a drop of smoothie off the table with her napkin. Irene’s smile widens as she takes a sip of her drink.

It’s sweeter than she remembers.