Jisung stared at his phone, the screen dark. It was a week before the concert. A week before he’d see her again. The jittery feeling had started in his stomach that morning, a low-grade buzz he couldn’t switch off. Were they finally going to be something more than friends? Was everything even going to feel the same? What if it was all different, and when they saw each other in person again, it was terrible? The questions looped, a track on repeat his mind couldn’t scratch. Their texts had been normal—pictures from her of California sunsets bleeding orange over the desert, pictures from him of Seoul’s neon lights smearing the rain on his taxi window. She sent updates about her classes, the weird drama with her cheer team girls. He sent anecdotes about the members, about Changbin’s latest studio obsession or Felix trying to cook. They’d texted just last night about how he missed her mom’s cookies. It was all so familiar. And it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff built from years of easy words.
The hanok’s heated floor warmed the soles of his bare feet. He was alone in the communal living space, the others scattered—some in their rooms, some at the company. The air held the clean, woody scent of cedar from the walls and the sweet, fermented tang of soju from the empty glasses left on the low table. He’d come here to think, to escape the dorm’s tighter walls, but the silence was worse. It gave the questions room to breathe.
He picked up his phone again, thumb hovering over her name. He could call. He could just hear her voice, calibrate himself against it. But that felt like cheating. The test was the seeing. The being in the same air. He put the phone down, screen-up. It was a black mirror.
What if she looked at him and saw Han, the idol, and not Jisung? The thought was a cold stone in his gut. He’d spent years building Han, polishing him, making him sharp and entertaining and bulletproof. Kelsey had always been the one person who looked right through that construction. She’d met the raw materials. What if time and distance and his own damn career had finished the walls, and she couldn’t find the door anymore?
He stood, pacing the length of the polished wood floor. His reflection ghosted in the dark windowpanes—a lean silhouette, restless. A performer’s posture even in solitude. He forced his shoulders to drop. Tried to remember how to stand like just a guy. It felt like acting.
The photo he’d shown the members floated behind his eyes. That old picture of her, laughing in the passenger seat of her blue convertible, hair whipping in the wind. Sunshine, they’d called her. The word had felt like both a gift and a violation. Because she was. She was his sunshine. The private kind you don’t put on display. And now he’d invited her into the glare of his world. Backstage at a Stray Kids concert. Meeting seven other men who were his brothers but also, in that moment, would be strangers to her. Strangers who would see her, and talk to her, and maybe…
His jaw tightened. He stopped pacing. The possessive ache he’d felt in the practice room returned, deeper now. It wasn’t just about the members. It was about the transition. The handing over of his most sacred, simple thing to the complex machine of his life. What if the machine chewed it up? What if it chewed her up?
He imagined her face in the VIP crowd. The bright, supportive smile she’d wear. He imagined catching her eye during a song, the way he sometimes did with fans in the front row, a brief connection to ground the performance. But with her, it wouldn’t be a performance. It would be a confession. And what if she looked back with polite, friendly enthusiasm? Just a friend, proud of her friend. The stone in his gut turned heavier.
His phone buzzed on the table. A text. He was across the room in two strides.
It was her. A picture. Not a sunset. It was a close-up of a baking sheet, dotted with lumpy, misshapen blobs of dough. The text followed: “Attempt #3 at my mom’s chocolate chip cookies. They taste like regret and burnt butter. I think I forgot the sugar. Save me.”
A laugh punched out of him, sudden and loud in the quiet room. It was so perfectly, mundanely her. The grand failure, presented without apology. He could see her in her LA kitchen, flour probably on her cheek, scowling at the oven. The image was so vivid it ached.
He typed back, his fingers moving fast. “Send them to me. I’ll eat them. I’ve had worse from the company cafeteria.”
Her reply was immediate. “Liar. And no. I have my pride. Also, they might be poisonous.” A pause. The typing bubbles appeared, disappeared, then appeared again. “One week. You nervous?”
He stared at the question. She’d named it. Of course she had. Kelsey always went straight to the heart of the silence. He could deflect. Make a joke. He started to type a quip about only being nervous about her cookie-based homicide attempts.
He deleted it.
His thumbs hovered. The truth felt dangerous, a live wire. But this was her. If he couldn’t tell her the truth, then the terrible thing he feared was already true. He typed slowly, each letter a deliberate step.
“Yes.”
He sent it. One word. He put the phone down, as if it might burn him. He walked to the window, pressing his forehead against the cool glass. Outside, Seoul glittered, indifferent.
The phone buzzed. Once. He didn’t move for a long moment, letting the vibration fade into the silence. Then he turned.
Her reply. “Me too.”
Just that. No explanation. No cushioning joke. A shared admission, hanging in the digital space between them. The tight coil in his chest loosened, just a fraction. They were in the same strange water, then. Both treading, both looking at the same shore, unsure if they could reach it.
He picked up the phone, his decision solidifying. He called her. It rang twice.
“Hey.” Her voice was a little rough, like she’d been quiet for a while. He could hear the hum of her apartment in the background, the faint sound of city traffic. A home sound.
“Hey.” He sank onto the floor, leaning back against the wall. The cedar was smooth against his spine. “Tell me about the cookie disaster. Start from the beginning. Did you actually forget the sugar?”
She launched into the story, her voice weaving through the details—the misplaced measuring cup, the suspiciously old vanilla extract, the moment she realized the dough looked like wet sand. He listened, his eyes closed. He didn’t just hear the words; he felt the rhythm of her. The way her pitch rose in indignation, the soft laugh at her own incompetence. This was the calibration he needed. Not her face on a screen, but this—the texture of her being.
When she finished, there was a comfortable quiet. Not the heavy silence from before, but something shared. “So,” she said, her voice softening. “One week. What’s the plan, Han?”
He noticed she used his stage name. It was a boundary, a recognition of the context. He wanted to erase it. “The plan is the concert. Then after… I get you. Just us. I don’t know where yet. Somewhere quiet. Where we can hear each other think.”
“I’d like that,” she said, simple and direct. Then, quieter. “Jisung?”
His breath caught. There it was. The key. “Yeah?”
“It’s going to be okay. Even if it’s… different. It’s still us.”
He swallowed. The words were a balm and a challenge. It’s still us. What was ‘us’? A collection of memories and texts, or a living thing they were about to step into? “I know,” he said, because he wanted to believe her. “I just… I want it to be right.”
“It will be,” she said, with a conviction he didn’t feel. But he clung to the sound of it. “Now. Distract me from my culinary shame. Tell me something real. Not idol stuff. You stuff.”
So he did. He told her about the specific ache in his shoulders after practice today. About the old man who ran the convenience store near the hanok who always gave him an extra banana, no matter how many times Jisung told him he was an idol and could afford it. About the stupid, persistent melody that had been stuck in his head for two days that he couldn’t turn into a song. The small, true things. The things he was, underneath.
And as he talked, the jittery feeling began to change. It didn’t disappear. It transformed. The nervous energy was still there, buzzing under his skin, but it mixed with something else—a fierce, protective anticipation. A week. He would see her in a week. He would stand on a stage and pour out one version of his heart through music. And then he would walk off it, find her in the crowd, and show her the other version. The one that was entirely hers.
The fear was still there, a shadow in the corner. But it was no longer the whole room. She had stepped into it with him, just by saying she was nervous too. They were facing it together, even from across an ocean.
“I should go,” she whispered later, her voice thick with sleep. It was late for her. “My last class tomorrow is a killer.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sleep well, Kels.”
“You too. Practice hard.” A smile in her voice. “One week.”
“One week,” he echoed.
The call ended. The quiet of the hanok settled around him again, but it was different now. It was charged. He looked at his phone, at the picture of her disastrous cookies still on the screen. He saved it. A relic of this night, of the nervous waiting.
He stood, his body feeling lighter, more his own. The horizon of their meeting was no longer a terrifying cliff edge. It was a destination. And he knew, with a certainty that felt deeper than bone, that when someone asked him backstage, when a member or a staffer looked at Kelsey and then at him with a questioning smile, he would not say they were just friends. The words would not come. He would say nothing. He would just look at her, and let the silence speak the truth he was finally ready to hold.