The mirrored studio was hot and close, smelling of old sweat and polished wood. Jisung’s breath fogged the glass as he leaned against it, the only sound the rustle of his clothes and the soft thud of a discarded water bottle rolling to a stop near his feet. Four months. Four months since he’d stood in her Los Angeles doorway, the words ‘I love you’ a physical weight behind his teeth that he’d swallowed down. They texted constantly. They called when time zones and schedules aligned, her voice a lifeline through the static. It wasn’t enough. He told himself he wasn’t stalking, which meant he probably was. The burner Instagram account was open on his phone, the UCLA cheer team’s profile glowing in his hand.
They were doing a trend. Someone stood behind another, both visible on camera, doing a dance without the track. You had to guess the song purely from the sounds their movements made. He scrolled, his thumb leaving a smudge on the screen. Then she popped up, second to last. Kelsey. Her smile was bright and open for the camera, a flash of white teeth and crinkled eyes. Then the dance started. Her expression shifted. Her brows pulled together, her eyes flicking down to the floor, listening. That’s when he saw it. On her thumb—his ring. The simple silver band he’d sent her a month ago, a piece that fit his own fourth finger. She was fiddling with it, her middle finger spinning it around and around her thumb as she concentrated. A habit. His habit.
A slow, devastating warmth spread through his chest. She’d put his ring on her body. She was touching it, unconsciously, while she focused on something else entirely. It was the most intimate thing he’d seen in four months. Then she recognized the dance. Her face cleared, a quick, triumphant grin, and she caught up, her movements sharp and sure. How could something so small make him so happy and so desperately needy at the same time? The ache was a hollow point just below his sternum.
“Okay,” Hyunjin’s voice cut through the humid air of the studio. He was leaning over Jisung’s shoulder, having approached silently on dancer’s feet. “So how often do you stalk the UCLA cheerleaders’ profile?”
Jisung jerked, thumb jamming against the screen to lock it. “I’m not stalking. It’s a public account.”
“He checks almost every day,” Seungmin supplied from the center of the room, not looking up from tying his shoe.
Minho, stretching against the far mirror, smirked. “He’s worse at night.” He met Jisung’s eyes in the reflection. “I can hear the sighing from my room.”
Jeongin giggled, collapsing onto a practice mat. “Hyung with his big heart eyes.”
The room erupted. Chan was shaking his head, a fond smile on his face. Felix was cooing. Changbin made an exaggerated kissing noise. Jisung felt the heat climb his neck, but it was a familiar warmth, the kind that came from being known and loved by seven idiots who saw everything. He shoved his phone into his pocket. “Don’t you all have something better to do? Like, I don’t know, practicing?”
“We are practicing,” Minho said smoothly. “Practicing our observational skills. Subject: a lovesick squirrel.”
“I am not lovesick.”
“You’re watching a thirty-second video of a girl fidgeting with a ring on loop,” Hyunjin pointed out, plopping down next to him. “That’s the definition of terminal.”
Jisung didn’t answer. He pushed off the mirror and walked to the center of the room, needing to move. The ring on her thumb. It was a claim, but a quiet one. A secret she wore in public. For him. His body felt too tight, his skin humming with a restless energy that had nothing to do with their upcoming schedule. He dropped into a stretch, feeling the pull in his hamstrings, the ‘Resplendent Life’ tattoo along his side stretching with his skin. Blessed. He felt anything but.
“When do you see her next?” Chan asked, his voice quieter, cutting through the teasing.
Jisung kept his face toward the floor. “Not sure. Schedules are… schedules.” It was the practiced, vague answer he gave management, the press, himself. The truth was a calendar in his head filled with red X’s and a single, fragile circle two months away that could vanish with one rescheduled shoot.
“You should just call her,” Felix said. “Right now.”
“It’s 2 AM there.”
“So? She’d answer.”
He knew she would. She’d answer with sleep in her voice, that soft, rough tone that went straight to his gut. He’d called at worse times. He’d called her crying once, after a particularly brutal recording session where every lyric felt like a lie, and she’d listened for an hour, just listened, until the static in his head cleared. Calling her now, with the image of her thumb and his ring seared behind his eyes, felt dangerous. It felt like picking at a suture.
Minho came to stand beside him, mimicking his stretch. “The ring was a good move,” he said, low enough for only Jisung to hear. “Sentimental. Obnoxiously possessive. She’s wearing it.”
“On her thumb.”
“It’s on her body. That’s the point.” Minho straightened. “You’re going to wear yourself out before practice even starts. Chill.”
Chill. He was supposed to be good at compartmentalization. The stage was a box. The studio was a box. The longing was a box he kept locked in the dark of his own room, only opened when the city outside his window was quiet. But the box was leaking. It had been leaking since he’d taken her denim jacket, since he’d folded his hoodie on her chair. The ritual of mailed tokens—a bracelet, a seashell, a photo—wasn’t bridging the distance. It was underlining it. Each object was a placeholder for a person he couldn’t touch.
The producer’s voice crackled through the studio speakers, announcing they were ready for them. The mood shifted instantly, the teasing melting into a focused, professional calm. This was their language. This, they knew. Jisung fell into formation between Changbin and Hyunjin, his body aligning by muscle memory. The track started—a heavy, pulsating beat for a new title track. He moved. Hit the marks. His expression shifted into the sharp, fierce concentration he wore on stage. For three minutes, he wasn’t Jisung missing a girl in California. He was Han, and he was fire.
On the final pose, chest heaving, sweat dripping from his temple, the image flashed again: Kelsey, biting her lip in concentration, spinning his ring. His hand, resting on his knee, clenched. The ring finger was bare.
They ran the choreography again. And again. Each time, he poured the restless energy into the movement, making it sharper, harder. He channeled the ache into the thrust of his hips, the snap of his head. By the fifth run-through, his tank was soaked through, clinging to the scripted ‘Blessed’ over his pec. The others were flagging, breaths becoming ragged gasps. But he felt incandescent, burning up from the inside.
“Okay, break!” Chan called, doubling over. “Water. Five.”
Jisung walked to the side, not toward his bottle. He pulled his phone back out. Unlocked it. The video was still there, paused on her face mid-concentration. He zoomed in. On her hand. The silver was a blur, but it was there. His. He traced the screen with his thumb, a poor imitation of touch. A drop of sweat fell from his chin and landed on the glass, right over her smile.
“You’re pathetic.”
He didn’t look up. “You live with me. You’re pathetic by association.”
Minho handed him a water bottle. “Drink. Before you combust.” He leaned against the mirror, watching him. “You know, for a guy who almost said the big three words, you’re doing a lot of looking and not a lot of talking.”
“I talk to her.”
“About the weather. About our day. You send her trinkets like a crow. When are you going to say it?”
The question hung in the steamy air. Jisung took a long pull of water, the cold a shock to his system. “Next time I see her.”
“You said that last time.”
“This time I mean it.” The words came out harder than he intended. He did mean it. The realization on the plane, clutching her jacket, had been absolute. It was the follow-through that terrified him. Saying it into the void of a phone line felt wrong. It needed to be in the same air. It needed her eyes on his, so he could see if the world cracked for her the way it had for him.
Minho just nodded, as if he’d heard all of that in the silence. “Well, until then, maybe stop watching that video. You’ve memorized it. It’s creepy.”
Jisung finally locked his phone and shoved it away. He was right. He had memorized it. The exact second her smile faded into focus. The way her tongue touched the corner of her mouth. The number of times she spun the ring before she recognized the dance—three.
The producer called them back. As they reset, Hyunjin bumped his shoulder. “Cheer up. At least you know she’s not flirting with any college guys while wearing your jewelry.”
A cold, sharp blade twisted in Jisung’s gut. The thought hadn’t fully formed, had been lurking in the background noise of his need. Now it was front and center, vivid and ugly. A guy in her class. A teammate. Someone who saw her every day, who could make her laugh without a twelve-hour time delay. Someone who could touch her. Would they see the ring? Would they ask about it? Would she say, ‘Oh, it’s from a friend’?
His jaw tightened. The ‘just friends’ label they’d worn for years, the label he’d used as a shield, now felt like a noose. He’d said it himself, in that LA restaurant booth a lifetime ago, when the others had asked. *No, we’re just friends.* He’d meant it then. He didn’t mean it now. The thought of another man hearing that from her, believing it, moving into the space it created… His hand, hanging at his side, curled into a fist.
The music started again. This time, his performance wasn’t fire. It was something darker, sharper. A blade. Every hit was a boundary. Every glance at the mirror was a challenge. He didn’t see his own reflection. He saw the ghost of a smile directed at someone else. He saw a hand, not his, reaching for hers. The possessive, grounding hand that always found the small of her back—that was his habit. His right. The idea of it belonging to anyone else was a physical revulsion, a nausea mixed with a surge of pure, undilated want.
He wanted her here. Not in pieces on a screen. Not in whispered phone calls. Here. In this hot, messy room. He wanted her to see this—the work, the sweat, the frustration. He wanted to kiss her with the taste of exhaustion in his mouth. He wanted to lay his head in her lap after, and have her fingers card through his damp hair without a word. He wanted the simple, conquering certainty they’d felt in her bed to be the air he breathed, not a memory he visited at 2 AM.
The track ended. He held the final pose, chest burning, his breath coming in ragged gasps that fogged the mirror in front of him. In the blurred glass, his own eyes looked back, wide and desperate. The studio was quiet save for the panting of eight men.
Slowly, he straightened. He walked to his bag in the corner, his movements deliberate. He pulled out his phone once more. He didn’t open Instagram. He opened his messages. To her. The last text was from her, six hours ago: a picture of her coffee with his seashell beside it. *Thinking of the ocean.*
His thumbs hovered over the screen. The teasing of his members was a distant buzz. The heat of the lights, the smell of sweat, the ache in his muscles—it all narrowed to this bright rectangle. He didn’t type *I love you*. He wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t reckless. Not with this.
He typed what was true, right now, in the aftermath of seeing his ring on her body and imagining a world where it meant nothing to anyone else.
*Saw the video. You looked good.*
A pause. His heart hammered against his ribs. He added the rest, the need spilling over.
*Miss the sound of your music. Too loud. Miss you.*
He hit send before he could think. The message whooshed away into the void, a tiny, digital flare shot across the ocean. He stared at the screen, waiting for the dots that wouldn’t come. It was the middle of the night there. She was asleep.
He slid the phone back into his bag. When he turned, the others were watching him, their faces softened from teasing to something closer to understanding. They saw the crack. He didn’t try to hide it.
“Alright,” Chan said, his voice gentle. “Let’s call it. Clean up.”
Jisung nodded. He grabbed his towel, wiped his face. The compulsive need to check for a reply was a itch under his skin. He ignored it. He walked to the mirror and placed his hand flat against the glass, over the fog his breath had left. The cool surface against his palm. Four months. A ring on a thumb. A bridge made of mailed fragments. It wasn’t enough. It had to be enough, for now. He closed his eyes and saw her, not on a screen, but in the passenger seat of a blue convertible a lifetime ago, music blasting, home.
When he opened his eyes, his reflection was clear. Resolved. He had a world to conquer here first. Then he’d cross the ocean and claim his own.