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On nights where everyone is asleep, Heejin wakes.
She finds herself scrolling idly through old pictures of her dog on her phone. The monotonous hum of the washing machine as the music to her wandering thoughts.
A head pops out of the door, revealing tousled hair and eyes too bright for someone who shouldn't be awake and doing laundry at an hour like this. Except Jiwoo comes empty handed, only a weird, frantic energy radiating off of her.
Heejin doesn't ask.
"Do you mind?" Jiwoo gestures to where she's sitting. Heejin shakes her head no.
Delighted, she plops down beside her with a huff, greeting both Heejin and Tori on her phone screen.
Heejin watches as Jiwoo heaves out a big sigh, as if the exhaustion would drain itself out of her body.
“I miss home too.” Jiwoo leans her head back, eyes fixated on the ceiling, the smile on her face a waning moon. Captivating, nonetheless. Heejin follows the sharp line on Jiwoo’s jaw and the soft curve of her cheeks with her eyes, and maps out the side of her face down to the hollow of her neck.
"Jungeun unnie said you were quite popular," Heejin says, quite aware of the fact that Jiwoo knows that she's staring from the smirk forming on her lips.
"Not as much as I am now." Jiwoo laughs, leaning her head against the wall with her eyes closed.
Heejin feels her head spin along with her laundry.
Heejin finds herself in Cheongju with Jiwoo three days after promotions officially end. Jungeun opted to stay in Seoul for a while, red coloring her cheeks at the mention of Sooyoung unnie and a camping trip.
Words are exchanged, seamlessly stringing themselves together as they watch the landscape blur and the clouds meandering about overhead through the tinted car windows. Jiwoo never runs out of things to say, Heejin finds herself paying attention to every little detail.
The day ends like this, Heejin’s cheek pressed against the bone of Jiwoo’s shoulder, Jiwoo tapping unsteady rhythms on the palm of Heejin’s hand with the pads of her fingers, singing a song that she doesn’t recognize.
The news had told her of a storm brewing around the area, Heejin remembers. Jiwoo brings her to her mother's office instead of wandering about the streets.
In the middle of the room stands a piano. The dents and discoloration scattered around it denoting the passage of time. Heejin runs a hand through spruce and ivory.
It feels intimate. Everything she touches with the tip of her finger in this room was once and is still a part of Jiwoo. Afraid she might be overstepping some sort of line, Heejin falters.
"I was her student once," Jiwoo recalls, almost like she can see right through her, almost like an invitation.
Heejin imagines: Jiwoo, half of her height now, slouching on the piano seat, determined to soldier through another lesson just so she can take her well anticipated nap after.
Present Jiwoo presses a few fingers into the keys, like dipping her toe to test the waters.
"Freshly tuned," Heejin remarks, impressed.
Her fingers stumble upon the keys, clumsy and searching, laughing when the wrong notes are hit. She manages to finish the song somehow, through the awkward gaps of silence between phrases as she struggles to remember what's next.
Heejin finds it endearing.
"I forget sometimes," Jiwoo says softly, gaze laced with something pensive and forlorn and so unfamiliar. "This is supposed to be something I enjoy."
"Sometimes, it all feels so distant. And the person holding the mic no longer feels like me."
Heejin watches the emotions on Jiwoo's face unravel. Recognizes the exhaustion from the way her eyes droop by a fraction. Jiwoo looks so fragile.
"But Heejin-ah," she continues, flashing an embarrassed smile. "It's something I can't imagine myself not doing.”
In the years that it took of obsessively trying to fit the mold of an idol, over the pursuit of perfection in technique, in looks, in speech, something in Heejin grew.
It's there when she hits a note that she spent hours holed up in her studio to work on. It's there when she huffs and falls to the cold floor of the practice room. It's there when leaves the stage, exhilaration blazing in her lungs. It's there when she breathes, and it burns.
But now, Heejin remembers, when Jiwoo starts to sing, tender and feathery to her ears, what it's like. To be free from wearing herself thin and picking herself apart until there's nothing left so she could be better .
Even as the day bled into the night, they stayed on the floor of her mom's office. The old record player by the windowsill plays one brisk tune after the other.
Heejin flips through the records and sheet music stacked neatly on the shelves as the rain trickles to a stop. Jiwoo, by her side, humming along and making up her own lyrics.
She forbids herself from remembering Jiwoo, exhausted to the bone, gaunt and frail as she drags herself out of the company doors, a pained smile rehearsed and ready on her face when Jungeun takes the initiative to gently grab her by the wrist into her room to save her from the questions that have yet to leave the members' mouths.
Right now, in front of her, sunbeams peppering warm kisses on the side of her face, Jiwoo has her mouth hanging open in laughter after she expertly sings the parts where the record scratches.
Heejin wants to remember her like this.
Nights in Cheongju become a peachy haze of blissful inactivity. When the need for groceries arises, Jiwoo volunteers the both of them into going.
They pad through the aisles, elbows touching. Jiwoo props both of her arms on the cart and propels it into motion with one foot like a skateboard, brimming with excitement at the promise of Heejin cooking tomorrow.
“Unnie, is there anything you want?”
Jiwoo studies her for a moment, a hint of a smile creeping on her face. The tenderness of her gaze making Heejin's cheeks burn even as the cool of the refrigerator hits her.
“I want to kiss the moles on your face.” No one else is in the supermarket at this hour, but the words flow from her lips like it’s a secret only to be kept between the both of them and no one else.
“I have more on my neck,” Heejin offhandedly quips, earning her a gasp and a weak slap on her arm.
“Heejin!” Jiwoo exclaims, dramatically clutching her chest, eyebrows furrowed like she’s trying not to laugh. She says something else, but Heejin doesn't catch it. Jiwoo's voice fades into incoherent mumbling in her ears as she stumbles forward.
The tip of her nose pokes her cheek before her lips even meet her skin, and Heejin is close enough to feel her breath hitch.
For some reason, it feels like something long overdue.
Jiwoo blinks, hazel eyes wide and disbelieving.
"Was that okay," Heejin asks, tugs softly at her wrist to pull her out of her daze. To tell her all of that was very real. How silly, Heejin thinks, since they do it all the time in front of all the cameras like it's second nature.
But this is Jiwoo. Stripped off her idol persona. Jiwoo who visibly brightens as she gently assures with an okay.
Okay.
You can do it again.
As much as you want to.
It still takes a while for Heejin to reset.
Old habits that grew out of idoldom now are engraved in her system. And Heejin finds it easier to slip into them than to turn them off.
Right now, there is no pressure to look pretty and be entertaining. The group of people huddled at the corner of the room pointing several cameras at them nowhere to be found.
There is only Jiwoo, dangerously wielding a knife with one hand and her phone on the other, occasionally reciting the recipe to herself.
"Heejin-ah," Jiwoo says then, as Heejin is bent over trying to perfectly cut some mushrooms in uniform proportions, only giving her a hum as a reply.
"Every time I see you, I want to keep seeing you." Jiwoo says it in a way that she always does. Like she's just telling Heejin about her day.
"Even when you're not looking at me."
The mushrooms are forgotten for a moment.
Seconds stretch into infinity as silence settles around them. The words feel calculated, still hanging heavy in the air. But Jiwoo doesn't say anything else, just goes on with washing the dishes. Like she didn't just leave Heejin's brain winded and gasping for air, looking for some kind of reply that won't make her sound like a fool.
"Unnie."
Jiwoo stares back, beautiful and washed with the light of dusk from where she stands.
"You haven't kissed me today."
It became a pattern she didn't want to break. The kissing. Their lips always landed on the cheek, never on the other's. Heejin knows, time is what they need.
Jiwoo smiles as she closes the distance.