Chan had just pulled a clean t-shirt over his head when Seungmin found him, eyes wide with the kind of glee usually reserved for discovering a hidden snack stash. "Oh, Chan, you have to see this. Jisung's 'friend' is amazing."
He followed, the backstage corridors a blur of crew and equipment cases, until they reached the green room doorway. The scene inside was a study in gravitational pull. The others—Hyunjin, Changbin, Jeongin—were clustered, freshly showered and in street clothes, orbiting a single point of warmth. And then he saw her.
Chan saw her. Jisung was standing so close to her their shoulders touched, his arm a casual, claiming weight across the back of the velvet sofa behind her head. She was pretty, but not in the curated, symmetrical way of the idols and models who usually filled these rooms. Her eyes were a clear, startling green—no contacts. Her hair was a long, sun-streaked cascade of strawberry blonde and honey, the kind of color companies spent fortunes trying to replicate in bottles. Real. Her freckles were real, too, a dusting across her nose and cheeks, not drawn on for a concept. She wore a simple black top, a short skirt, sheer black tights, and chunky platform boots. She looked strong, athletic in her posture, and Chan vaguely registered she was exactly his type, and Changbin’s, and probably Jisung’s too.
Seungmin caught his eye from across the room. He didn’t say a word, but his expression was a silent, gleeful plea: *Turn on the charm. Flirt with her. You have to see this for yourself.*
So Chan did. He slipped into the room, his leader’s smile easy and warm. “Making friends without me?”
The group shifted, Hyunjin and Changbin making space. Jisung’s arm didn’t move from the sofa back. “Chan, this is Kelsey,” Jisung said, his voice casual, but his eyes were tracking Chan’s approach like a laser. “Kelsey, this is our leader, Bang Chan.”
“Hi,” Kelsey said, her smile bright and immediate. Dimples appeared in her cheeks. It was a good smile, kind and open, but Chan saw it—the warmth didn’t quite reach the watchful green of her eyes. It was a perfect social shield. “I’ve heard a lot about you. All good things, promise.”
“Hopefully not too embarrassing,” Chan said, leaning against the arm of a nearby chair. He kept his tone light, playful. “Jisung tends to exaggerate.”
“Only about how often you win at Mario Kart,” she said, and the group laughed. Her gaze flicked to Jisung for a half-second, a private check-in, before returning to Chan. “He’s a sore loser.”
“A fact known to all of Korea,” Felix chimed in, his Australian accent warm.
Chan kept his attention on Kelsey. “So, you’re the famous friend from Arizona. Jisung talked about you non-stop when he first joined. The girl with the blue convertible and the illegally loud music.”
Her laugh was low, a little raspy. It filled the space. “He was the only one who didn’t complain about the volume.”
“I liked the playlist,” Jisung said, his voice quieter now, just for her. His thumb, hidden behind her head, began to stroke a slow, absent line against the velvet. Chan saw it. The intimacy of the gesture was so casual, so ingrained, it was more possessive than any declaration.
“What brings you to LA?” Chan asked, leaning forward slightly.
“School, mostly. And the weather. Arizona heat is dry. This is… different.”
“She’s studying English,” Hyunjin offered, his eyes appreciatively tracing the line of her legs before snapping back up. “Trying to corrupt the classics, she said.”
“Analyze, not corrupt,” Kelsey corrected gently, her dimples flashing again in that polite smile. “And I’m trying to learn Korean. Emphasis on *trying*.”
Jisung snorted. “She’s fist-fighting Hangul.”
“I’m fist-fighting the whole language,” she said, turning her head to look at him fully. The polite mask dropped for a second, replaced by real, fond exasperation. “I don’t know why you convinced me it was going to be fine. Spanish is easier.”
The shift was subtle. When she looked at Chan, she was charming and bright. When she looked at Jisung, the light changed. It warmed, deepened, turned private. And Jisung leaned into it, his body angling toward hers like a plant toward the sun.
Chan watched, fascinated. He turned the charm up a notch, asking about her life in LA, her favorite spots, the vibe of her university. She answered everything with that dimpled smile and easy wit, engaging but giving nothing truly personal away. And the entire time, Jisung’s silent claim on her space grew more pronounced. His arm slid down from the sofa back to rest on her shoulders. She didn’t stiffen; she sank back into it, her body molding against his side as naturally as breathing.
Seungmin’s point became crystal clear. The others were dazzled by her—her laugh, her looks, her easy California confidence. But she was pushing them all back with a ten-foot pole wrapped in velvet. Every laugh, every answer, was a gentle, firm redirection back to safe, group topics. And she did it so well, with such kindness, that it didn’t feel like rejection. It felt like flirting. But Chan saw the boundary, steel beneath the smile.
She wasn’t saying *don’t flirt with me, I’m his*. She was making it so no one else even got the chance to try.
The dynamic in the room shifted. The members stopped directing their charm at Kelsey and started aiming it at Jisung, teasing him, asking her questions about *him* back in the day. “Was he this much of a know-it-all in high school?” Changbin asked, his sharp eyes missing nothing, least of all the mere inches of space now separating Jisung’s thigh from Kelsey’s.
“Worse,” Kelsey said, grinning. “He had the accent to back it up then. It was very convincing.”
Jisung pinched her shoulder lightly. “Liar.”
It was then that Kelsey’s friend—a woman with dark hair who had been standing as a quiet, observant barrier between Kelsey and the circle of boys—spoke up. “Okay, we have to go. I have to study, and Ms. Ra-Ra herself over here has a game tomorrow.”
Felix perked up, his whole face brightening. He looked immediately at Chan, eyes wide with hopeful excitement. “A game?”
Chan felt the plan form in an instant. A distraction. A group activity. Something to ease the weird, charged tension in this room that was entirely centered on Jisung and the woman tucked under his arm. “What game?” Chan asked.
Kelsey waved a hand. “It’s nothing. Just UCLA basketball. I work concessions.”
“You work at the games?” Changbin asked, already calculating.
“She’s a cheerleader,” Jisung said, and the pride in his voice was a bare, raw thing. “Varsity. University level.”
Hyunjin, who had been quietly admiring her from a distance, blinked. “You cheer? Like, on the court?”
“That’s generally where the basketball players are, yeah,” she said, her smile turning wry.
Felix looked like he might vibrate out of his seat. He turned his pleading gaze fully on Chan. “Please. Can we go? It’s American culture!”
Jeongin nodded vigorously. “Hyung, please? It’s cultural research!”
Kelsey laughed, the sound real and unguarded this time. “It’s basketball and bad popcorn. And a lot of yelling.”
Jisung was looking at her, not at the group. His hand on her shoulder had tightened, just slightly. “You want us there?” he asked, his voice low.
She met his gaze. The room seemed to fall away. Her polite smile was gone. What was left was something quieter, more vulnerable. “It’s a big crowd. You’d have to be… careful.”
“We’re always careful,” Chan said, the leader in him taking over. A public, chaotic event was easier to manage than this intimate, electrically charged green room. “We can do careful. Discreet. It would be fun.” He looked at Jisung. “If it’s okay with you.”
Jisung’s eyes were still locked on Kelsey. He searched her face. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah,” Jisung said, his voice rough. “Yeah, it’s okay.”
And that was how, with a flurry of excited plans and logistics, they ended up with tickets to a UCLA basketball game the following night. The group’s energy shifted into practical mode—discussing hats, hoodies, how to blend in. Kelsey’s friend, Maya, began to shepherd her toward the door.
As Kelsey stood, Jisung’s hand slid from her shoulders down to her wrist. His fingers circled it, not tight, but deliberate. A silent anchor. “I’ll text you,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“You better,” she said. Then she turned to the group, that brilliant, dimpled social smile back in place. “It was really great to meet you all. Seriously.”
They chorused their goodbyes, Felix waving enthusiastically. Chan watched as she let Jisung walk her to the door, his hand now resting on the small of her back, low and possessive. They stopped just in the doorway, half in shadow. Jisung leaned in, saying something too quiet for the room to hear. Kelsey listened, then reached up and adjusted the collar of his shirt, a gesture so domestic it stole the air from Chan’s lungs. She nodded, smiled a real, small smile just for him, and then she was gone, pulled away by her friend.
Jisung stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at the empty corridor. The room behind him was silent, the members exchanging loaded glances.
Chan finally let out a slow breath. He looked at Seungmin, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, *See?*
Changbin was the one who broke the silence, his voice dry. “Just friends, huh?”
Jisung turned back to face them. He didn’t smile. He didn’t deny it. He just looked at them all, his jaw tight, his eyes burning with a quiet, terrifying certainty. The pretense was gone. It had evaporated the moment his fingers had wrapped around her wrist.
“Yeah,” Jisung said, the word a flat, final challenge. “Just friends.”
No one in the room believed him. Least of all himself.