Chapter 2

The studio always smelled faintly of paper, warm lights, and coffee that had been forgotten for just long enough to become part of the furniture.

Nayeon liked it that way.

By ten-thirty, the place had fully woken around her. The front windows let in a pale wash of March light that caught on glass frames and polished floors, and the main workspace was already in its usual state of controlled disorder: cables coiled in the wrong place, a half-unpacked reflector leaning against the wall, yesterday’s test prints still clipped to the corkboard near her desk. On the back counter, Minji had left her laptop open beside a cup of tea she had somehow managed not to finish, which felt less like an accident and more like a personality trait.

Nayeon stood in front of the editing monitor with one hand wrapped around her second coffee of the day and the other braced against the desk, squinting at a set of engagement photos with deepening suspicion.

“No,” she muttered.

Behind her, Minji looked up from the front reception desk. “That sounds like a no.”

“That’s because it is one.”

“Do I want to know?”

Nayeon clicked to the next image, then back again, as if repeated exposure might improve it through shame alone. It did not. “Why,” she asked the universe at large, “would anyone crop two people’s faces that close to the edge and then leave half a decorative hedge in the middle?”

Minji winced. “I thought it looked artsy.”

“It looks like the shrubbery is getting married.”

Minji laughed, which was unhelpful because Nayeon was trying to stay irritated on principle.

From the far side of the studio, Seungwan, who handled prints and packaging three afternoons a week and therefore considered herself the patron saint of everyone else’s nonsense, lifted her head just long enough to say, “In fairness, a hydrangea has never ruined anybody’s life.”

Nayeon clicked back to the original crop. “This one’s trying.”

Seungwan lowered her head again, satisfied.

That was the thing about the studio. It belonged to Nayeon, technically, in all the legally binding and tax-paying ways that mattered. But after enough years of long edits, impossible clients, broken flashes, delivery delays, and too many cold lunches eaten over keyboards, it had become less like a workplace and more like a small weather system made up of familiar people with distinct forms of damage.

Nayeon understood weather.

She set her coffee down, leaned in, and recropped the image herself with sharp, efficient movements. There. Better. The couple returned to the center of their own engagement. The hydrangea could find another way to be important.

Her phone buzzed against the desk.

Not a call. Just a text.

Yunjin: survived the quiz
Yunjin: not to brag but i may be the brightest mind of my generation

Nayeon smiled before she could stop herself.

Nayeon: did you answer at least one question correctly
Yunjin: blocked
Nayeon: harsh
Yunjin: see you later. eat lunch

Nayeon stared at the last message for a second, then typed back:

Nayeon: i hate that this is your whole personality now
Yunjin: and yet you married me
Nayeon: tragic oversight on my part

The typing bubble appeared, vanished, then returned.

Yunjin: liar

Nayeon looked at that one longer than necessary.

Then Minji made a small, dramatic choking noise from the desk.

“What?”

Minji pointed at Nayeon’s face. “Nothing. Just. You smiled at your phone like someone in a coffee commercial.”

“I’ll cut your hours.”

“You say that every week.”

“And one day it’ll mean something.”

Minji grinned and ducked her head again before Nayeon could find something to throw at her that wasn’t expensive.

Nayeon put her phone face down beside the keyboard and returned to work, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her for another minute anyway.

The day moved in studio increments after that.

A client pickup at eleven. A framed family portrait wrapped in brown paper and string for an older woman who nearly cried when she saw it and thanked Nayeon with such intensity that Nayeon had to pretend to be very interested in the receipt printer for a moment. Then a video call with a local florist who wanted branding shots that were “editorial, but still warm,” which narrowed absolutely nothing down. Then another round of edits. Then a quick inventory check because someone kept ordering batteries and forgetting memory cards as if cameras ran on optimism.

By one-fifteen, she had technically eaten lunch if iced coffee counted as a food group.

By one-twenty, Jihyo appeared in the doorway carrying a paper bag and the expression of someone who had come to save a life by force if necessary.

Nayeon looked up from her desk. “That face means I’ve done something wrong.”

“That face,” Jihyo said, stepping inside, “means I know you skipped lunch.”

Nayeon narrowed her eyes. “There’s a traitor in this building.”

Minji, from the front, raised a hand without shame. “I contain multitudes.”

Jihyo crossed the studio and dropped the bag on Nayeon’s desk. It smelled immediately and unmistakably like actual food. Warm food. The kind that had not been purchased from a vending machine or inhaled standing over a sink.

“You are all deeply committed to controlling me,” Nayeon said.

Jihyo unwrapped the top of the bag and pulled out a container. “You say that every time someone keeps you from eating printer paper for dinner.”

“I’ve never eaten printer paper.”

“Because I intervene.”

There was no point arguing with a person like Jihyo when she was in this mood. Nayeon accepted the container with the air of a political prisoner receiving rations.

Jihyo glanced around the studio. “Where’s the academic wife?”

“Class.”

“She still coming by later?”

Nayeon opened the lid and tried not to look relieved by what she found inside. “That was the plan.”

“Mm.”

The sound was mild. Too mild.

Nayeon looked up sharply. “What does mm mean?”

“It means mm.”

“You’re the worst.”

“I’m the one who brought you lunch.”

“That does not erase your crimes.”

Jihyo only smiled, the kind that suggested she knew several things Nayeon would prefer not to discuss before three in the afternoon. Then her gaze dropped, briefly and without comment, to the silver bracelet on Nayeon’s wrist as Nayeon reached for the chopsticks. Her expression shifted by something so small it might not have been there at all.

Before Nayeon could ask about it, Minji called from the front.

“Jihyo, do you want coffee?”

“Do I look dead to you?” Jihyo called back.

“Sometimes.”

“Then yes.”

She left toward the counter with the confidence of someone who no longer needed an invitation.

Nayeon ate because she knew better than to waste an ambush meal from Jihyo. The food was still warm, and after a few bites she felt annoyingly more human. Around her, the studio settled into its early-afternoon lull. Seungwan slipped out for a delivery run. Minji argued with the printer. Somewhere in the back office, the old radiator knocked like it had an opinion.

For a few minutes, everything felt comfortably ordinary again.

Then the front door opened and the ordinary shifted, not because anything dramatic happened, but because Nayeon looked up and saw Yunjin stepping inside with her bag over one shoulder and two takeaway cups balanced carefully in one hand.

The relief that moved through her was so immediate it almost irritated her.

Yunjin spotted her at once. “You ate lunch?”

Nayeon lifted her container a few inches. “I’m under surveillance.”

“Good.”

She crossed the room, stopping only to pass one of the coffee cups to Jihyo, who had reappeared as if summoned by caffeine-based instinct.

“You’re my favorite,” Jihyo informed her solemnly.

“I know,” Yunjin said.

Nayeon watched the exchange with narrowed eyes. “It’s unbelievable how popular you are in my own place of business.”

“It’s because I’m charming,” Yunjin said, setting the second cup on Nayeon’s desk.

Nayeon looked at it. Then at her. “What is it?”

“Your order.”

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

Yunjin adjusted the strap of her bag. “That has never stopped you from wanting coffee.”

This, unfortunately, was true.

Nayeon took the cup and found it exactly right, of course. She hated when Yunjin was useful in ways that made gratitude feel suspiciously close to dependence.

“Thank you,” she said, aiming for casual and probably not hitting it.

Yunjin only nodded and glanced at the screen behind her. “Are those the hydrangea casualties?”

Minji, from the front, gasped. “You too?”

“I have eyes,” Yunjin said.

Nayeon laughed into the lid of her cup, and Yunjin’s mouth softened around the edge of a smile before she looked away.

Jihyo saw all of this, naturally, because Jihyo saw everything, and chose that exact moment to announce she had other people to terrorize and should therefore leave before she started charging rent for emotional supervision.

At the door, she paused and pointed two fingers at Nayeon’s lunch container. “Finish it.”

Then, to Yunjin, “Don’t let her pretend coffee is a nutrient.”

“I never do.”

“Traitors,” Nayeon muttered, but Jihyo was already gone, laughing under her breath.

Yunjin dropped her bag on the chair beside Nayeon’s desk and shrugged out of her coat. Underneath she wore the dark sweater Nayeon liked, though she would not have been able to explain why beyond some vague nonsense about the neckline and the fact that it made Yunjin look especially composed. That kind of reasoning felt dangerous if examined directly.

“How bad is it?” Yunjin asked, tilting her head at the monitor.

Nayeon looked at the screen as if seeing it for the first time. “Minji is trying to make foliage the emotional centerpiece of human relationships.”

“I said it was one time,” Minji protested.

“It was twelve photos.”

“That’s still one time if they were consecutive.”

Yunjin leaned slightly over Nayeon’s shoulder to look more closely, one hand braced on the back of the chair. “Move over.”

Nayeon moved without protest, which was probably its own kind of problem. Yunjin used the mouse for all of three seconds before making a thoughtful noise.

“The crop isn’t the only issue.”

Nayeon looked up at her. “Go on.”

“The tones are too cool for the setting, so it’s making the greenery feel louder.”

Minji pointed at her from across the room. “That’s exactly what I said.”

“No, you said it looked artsy,” Nayeon replied.

“That was the feeling underneath the thought.”

Yunjin made one small adjustment and handed the mouse back. “Try that.”

Nayeon did. The image warmed by a degree that should not have mattered and immediately looked less like a hostage situation arranged by landscaping.

She clicked her tongue. “Annoying.”

“That I’m right?”

“That you enjoy it.”

Yunjin’s expression went bright with the kind of satisfaction she tried and often failed to hide. “I do.”

The rest of the afternoon folded around them in familiar layers.

Yunjin settled in the back editing room with her laptop, a stack of notes, and one of the color correction jobs Nayeon trusted her with more than she trusted half her paid staff. Minji stopped pretending not to eavesdrop on them every time they passed each other. Seungwan came back with packaging tape and gossip from the print shop downstairs. Nayeon bounced between the front area and her office, handling emails, checking proofs, and fielding one phone call from a client who kept saying “natural” while clearly meaning “make me look ten years younger.”

At some point, Yunjin appeared in her doorway holding a memory card between two fingers.

“You left this in the side pocket of your camera bag.”

Nayeon glanced up from a spreadsheet and frowned. “I was looking for that.”

“I know.”

There was no judgment in it. Just a calm statement of fact, which somehow made it worse.

Nayeon took the card from her. Their fingers brushed. Nothing happened. Everything happened. The moment passed.

“Thanks.”

Yunjin tilted her head toward the spreadsheet. “You hate numbers.”

“I hate other people’s numbers. Mine are full of personality.”

“That’s not how accounting works.”

“That’s because accounting lacks vision.”

Yunjin’s smile flickered, then lingered. “You say that like it’s a serious criticism.”

“It is.”

She should have gone back to the editing room then. Instead she stayed in the doorway another second, looking at Nayeon with that quietly intent expression she had when she was deciding whether to say something.

Nayeon felt, absurdly, as if she ought to brace.

But then the front bell chimed. Someone had come in, and the moment closed before it opened.

Yunjin straightened first. “I’ll get it.”

Nayeon nodded, though the answer arrived half a beat late.

Through the glass wall of the office she watched Yunjin cross the studio floor, easy and sure in a space that had become almost as much hers as Nayeon’s. She greeted the client at the front with her usual composed warmth, took the package slip, and turned just enough that the light from the front windows touched the side of her face.

For one brief, strange second, Nayeon thought of the morning again. Of a cuff buttoned neatly. Of fingers lingering at her wrist. Of that pause she still had not decided how to think about.

She looked down at the spreadsheet instead.

By five, the day had thinned. The last pickup was gone. Seungwan had left with two framed prints and a promise to be back Thursday. Minji was in the front pretending to reorganize sample albums while actually texting someone with the concentration of a surgeon. The windows had gone from gray to gold-edged, the city outside slipping toward evening.

Nayeon stretched in her chair until her back cracked softly, then stood and crossed to the main desk where Yunjin was sorting invoices into piles with the kind of careful attention usually reserved for explosives.

“You know,” Nayeon said, “you could simply stop making yourself useful and force me to suffer alone.”

Yunjin didn’t look up. “And miss hearing you complain for free?”

“That’s love of the craft.”

“That’s one phrase for it.”

Nayeon leaned her hip against the desk. “You have class tomorrow morning?”

“Only one.”

“So you can come in late if you want.”

Now Yunjin did look up.

There was nothing loaded in the sentence, not really. Just practical concern. A simple observation about scheduling. But something in Yunjin’s face softened anyway, enough that Nayeon had to resist the urge to immediately ruin it with a joke.

“I’m fine,” Yunjin said. “I’ll still come.”

Nayeon nodded. “Okay.”

For a moment neither of them moved. The studio around them was quiet in that rare way places only become when the workday has almost ended and everyone left inside already belongs there.

Then Minji made an indelicate noise from the front.

“I’m sorry,” she said when both of them looked over. “But if you two are going to stand there looking married, can one of you at least help me with the client archive?”

Nayeon threw a receipt roll at her. Minji caught it and looked pleased with herself.

Yunjin laughed, low and helpless, and turned back to the invoices before Nayeon could say something she would regret.

It was nearly six when the email came in.

Nayeon almost ignored it.

She was halfway through shutting down one of the editing stations when the notification flashed across her screen, subject line buried among delivery confirmations and automated billing nonsense.

New Commission Inquiry: Ardent Dance Collective

She would have left it for morning if not for the word collective. Arts clients tended to take longer to answer simple questions and somehow always had the most elaborate opinions about texture, so it was better to know what kind of trouble was approaching before she went home.

She clicked it open.

The message itself was concise enough to be surprising. A New York-based contemporary dance company preparing for a major spring production. Looking for a studio to handle promotional portraits, rehearsal stills, and campaign imagery. Tight timeline, high visibility, likely ongoing work if the first collaboration went well.

Nayeon’s interest sharpened.

This kind of project was exactly the sort she liked: movement, artists, visual concepts that asked for something beyond smiling politely at a lens. She scrolled down further, past the overview, past the scheduling notes, past the preliminary mood board attachments.

There was a list of principal collaborators included in the initial materials.

Creative director. Choreographer. Production lead.

Featured guest performer.

Nayeon’s eyes moved over the line once without understanding it, then returned.

The name sat there in clean black type, simple as a fact and somehow harder to process because of it.

Myoui Mina.

For a second the whole studio seemed to go soundless around her.

Then, somewhere near the front, Yunjin said something to Minji and Minji laughed, and the world resumed without asking whether Nayeon was ready.

Nayeon stared at the screen.

Once.

Twice.

As if the letters might rearrange themselves into somebody else if she looked long enough.

They didn’t.

Behind her, footsteps crossed the studio floor.

“Nayeon?”

Yunjin’s voice, closer now.

Nayeon did not answer immediately.

Her hand had gone very still on the mouse.

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