Chapter 5

By the time the call started, Nayeon had already decided she was going to hate everyone involved.

It seemed the healthiest available approach.

The conference link sat open on her monitor with the kind of bland professionalism that made all disasters look manageable from a distance. Beside her keyboard, a legal pad held the notes she had pretended to write for practical reasons and had actually written to give her hands something to do. Budget ceiling. Deliverables. Rehearsal access. Licensing terms. All the language of work, clean and specific and useful. The sort of language that could usually save her from herself.

Not today, apparently.

Outside the office, the studio moved through late afternoon in its usual rhythm. Minji was explaining something to a client with the careful voice she used when she was trying not to sound like she thought they were an idiot. Somewhere near the print station, Seungwan was taping a package shut with enough aggression to imply personal betrayal. Light from the front windows stretched long and honey-colored across the floorboards.

Nayeon looked at the clock.

Two minutes.

She uncapped her pen.
Recapped it.
Uncapped it again.

This was ridiculous.

It was a project call. Nothing more than that. She had done dozens of them in the last few years and hated most of them on principle. People who said things like visual storytelling and brand intimacy and authentic movement as if adjectives could replace concrete planning. People who wanted art but also certainty. People who acted as though photographers were born already knowing what shade of white their brochures needed to be.

This would be no different.

Except for the part where Mina would be on the other side of the screen.

Nayeon stared at that thought as if it belonged to somebody else. It still didn’t feel real. Not in the way reality usually did. It felt more like an old nightmare wandering into modern lighting.

At the office door, someone tapped once against the frame.

Nayeon looked up.

Yunjin stood there with her bag still over one shoulder, hair a little wind-tossed from outside, expression composed and unreadable in that way Nayeon had become increasingly aware of in the last two days.

“You’re early,” Nayeon said.

“Olivia talks too much at lunch.”

The answer came dry enough that Nayeon almost smiled. Almost.

Then she remembered the call.

Yunjin noticed the legal pad, the open laptop, the clock. Her gaze lingered there a second before returning to Nayeon’s face.

“Now?”

Nayeon nodded once.

Yunjin stepped into the office fully and let the door drift halfway closed behind her, not shutting them in, not leaving them open either. She set her bag down on the spare chair.

“I can leave if you want.”

Nayeon frowned. “Why would I want that?”

Yunjin’s mouth moved, not quite into an expression. “You tell me.”

The answer prickled under Nayeon’s skin because it was fair and because she did not like fairness when it was inconvenient.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

“You usually don’t.”

There was no bite in it. That was what made it difficult.

Nayeon leaned back in her chair and looked at her properly. “I’m not asking you to leave.”

Yunjin held her gaze for a second, weighing something she did not say aloud. Then she nodded and crossed to the corner of the office where the low filing cabinet sat under the side window.

She perched on the edge of it, laptop on her knees, not exactly joining the call, not fully absent either.

Nayeon told herself the arrangement made sense. Yunjin helped with the studio. This project would eventually become part of her workload too. There was no reason for this to feel like something else.

There were, unfortunately, many reasons.

The minute ticked over.

Her screen shifted as the first participant joined.

Elena Rivera
Creative Director, Ardent Dance Collective

Then another.

Paul Han
Production Lead

Nayeon straightened a little, settling instinctively into professional posture before she had fully chosen it. “Hi, this is Nayeon. Can you both hear me?”

A woman with short dark curls and expensive glasses appeared first, framed by what looked like a home office built by someone allergic to visual clutter. Elena gave her a quick, practiced smile. “Loud and clear. Thank you for making time.”

Next came Paul, softer-faced and already tired-looking in the way production people always were, as if deadlines had adjusted the architecture of his soul. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Nayeon said.

They did the usual opening dance. Thanks for connecting. Excited about the concept. Love your portfolio. Appreciate the quick response. Nayeon answered cleanly and politely and with enough warmth to count as engaged while not accidentally becoming available for nonsense.

Yunjin stayed quiet in the corner, gaze on her own screen at first. Nayeon tried not to notice where her attention shifted when Elena began outlining the production.

Spring launch.
Limited New York run.
Cross-disciplinary concept built around stillness and rupture in contemporary movement.

That last phrase was the sort of thing Nayeon would normally make fun of later over takeout. Right now it landed badly.

Elena shared a mood board. Black-and-white rehearsal images. Grainy shadows. Bare shoulders and lifted hands and faces half-obscured by motion blur. Nayeon could already see what she would do differently. Less obvious elegance. More breath. Less performance about performance.

“We’re looking for portraiture that feels intimate without losing the scale of the work,” Elena said. “And your studio felt like the right fit for that. There’s restraint in your images, but not distance.”

Beside the window, Yunjin’s fingers paused on her keyboard for half a beat.

Nayeon ignored this with discipline.

She asked practical questions instead. “What’s your timeline for principal portraits?”

Paul answered. “Initial test shoot next week if possible. Full cast portraits the week after. Rehearsal stills once blocking is set.”

“Location?”

“Primarily our rehearsal space in Midtown,” Elena said. “Possibly one studio day on your side if the test shoot goes well.”

Nayeon wrote it down.

Paul started listing numbers. Usage rights. Poster placements. Social assets. Deliverable windows. Normal things. Useful things. Enough of them that Nayeon almost began to relax into the comfort of logistics.

Then Elena said, “And of course Mina will need a little extra flexibility built in.”

Nayeon’s pen stopped.

It was the first time the name had been spoken in the room.

Not by Yunjin.
Not by Jihyo.
Not by Nayeon herself, dragged reluctantly into honesty.
By a creative director discussing schedule accommodations, as if Mina were a line item. A manageable star orbit. A practical concern.

Across the office, Yunjin did not move.

Nayeon forced her hand into motion again. “What kind of flexibility?”

Elena answered easily. “Her rehearsal blocks are heavier than the others, and she’s doing some outside press around the production. We’ll have exact windows by Friday.”

“Fine,” Nayeon said, and heard how flat it sounded.

Paul, thankfully, was too busy sharing a calendar view to notice.

Elena did.

Something shifted in her expression, not enough to become suspicion, only awareness. “We can be as specific as you need with scheduling,” she said. “I know guest artist coordination can get messy.”

“Messy I can work with,” Nayeon said.

Yunjin’s eyes lifted from her laptop then.

If Elena noticed the second voice in the room without hearing it, she was too polite to show it.

The call went on.

Budget. Access windows. Turnaround times. Wardrobe coordination. Lighting preferences in rehearsal environments. Nayeon asked everything she needed to ask. Her notes remained neat. Her voice stayed level. The world did not crack in half simply because Mina’s name now existed in active grammar again.

She was almost beginning to think she might get through the entire thing without having to see her.

Then a fourth tile appeared.

No warning.
No apology.
Just a quiet square on the screen turning live.

Mina Myoui

The image resolved in pieces.

A white wall first. Then movement. Then Mina stepping partly into frame, hair tied back, one hand lifting to tuck something behind her ear while she sat down. There was a second in which she looked only half-present, expression distant with the kind of concentration people wore when moving from one obligation into another.

Then she looked up.

And saw Nayeon.

It happened so fast and so clearly that Nayeon knew, with a physical certainty, that everyone else on the call must have seen something. Not enough to name. Not enough to interrupt a professional meeting. But enough to alter the air. The kind of alteration people sensed before they understood.

Mina went still.

Not dramatically.
Not in any way she couldn’t recover from if she chose.
But still.

Nayeon’s body reacted before her mind did. Her spine locked. Her hand tightened around the pen until the plastic creaked softly. Heat climbed quick and ugly up the back of her neck.

Mina looked older.

Of course she did. They both did. But the fact landed anyway, strange and disorienting. The years had sharpened her. Not harshly. More like pressure had refined the line of her face and taught restraint to settle differently on it. She was in black rehearsal clothes, shoulders narrower than Nayeon remembered and stronger at the same time. Her hair was shorter. Her mouth looked exactly the same.

That last part irritated Nayeon on sight.

“Sorry,” Mina said, and even her voice was a problem. “Rehearsal ran over.”

Elena smiled in easy welcome. “You’re fine. We’re just going over logistics.”

Mina’s eyes flicked from Elena back to Nayeon, then once, briefly, toward the side of the office where Yunjin sat just out of frame.

If she recognized Yunjin from years of family-party glimpses and old peripheral memory, she did not show it clearly. But something in her expression altered, no more than a shift in breathing.

Nayeon hated that she noticed.

Elena kept talking. “Nayeon was just asking about schedule flexibility for your portrait window.”

“Right.” Mina looked back at the screen. At Nayeon. “Of course.”

The words were ordinary.
The eye contact was not.

Nayeon straightened almost imperceptibly. “As long as I have confirmed availability with enough notice, it won’t be a problem.”

Her own voice surprised her a little. Colder than before. Sharper around the edges. Still professional, but only just.

Paul jumped in immediately, either oblivious or merciful. “We can circulate a locked weekly schedule moving forward.”

“Please do,” Nayeon said.

Mina did not stop looking at her quickly enough.

That was the first true problem.

The second was that Nayeon could feel Yunjin noticing.

Not staring. Not making it obvious. But noticing in the precise, terrible way Yunjin noticed things when she wanted to understand them before deciding whether they could hurt her.

Mina finally looked away first and asked Elena something about costume fittings. The meeting resumed shape around that small fracture as if nothing had happened.

Nayeon wrote another three lines of notes she would not remember making.

The rest of the call blurred at the edges.

Not completely. She still tracked what mattered. The test shoot was confirmed for next Thursday. Ardent would send over reference selects and final legal language by tomorrow night. One rehearsal observation window would likely happen before the first official portrait session. Fine. Useful. Real.

All the while Mina remained there on the screen, speaking only when needed, every now and then glancing toward Nayeon as though the act of not doing so required active management.

It made Nayeon furious.

At the end of the call, Elena smiled that same polished smile from the beginning. “This feels like a promising fit. Thank you, everyone.”

Paul echoed the sentiment.

Mina, after the smallest pause, said, “Thank you.”

Nothing else.

No hello.
No acknowledgment dressed up as coincidence.
No apology smuggled into business language.

Just two words with years of wreckage behind them and none of it visible to anyone who had not lived inside it.

Nayeon nodded once because she could trust herself to do that much and no more. “We’ll be in touch.”

The screen emptied in stages.

Elena disappeared.
Paul followed.
Then Mina, last.

Nayeon clicked the meeting window closed before her own reflection could settle back into it.

The office went very quiet.

For a second neither she nor Yunjin spoke.

The sounds of the studio beyond the half-closed door returned gradually. Minji laughing at something with obscene enthusiasm. A printer starting up again. Life insisting, once more, on carrying on around private disaster.

Nayeon set her pen down carefully. “Well.”

It was a useless word. It was the only one available.

Yunjin lowered her laptop without closing it. “You were right.”

Nayeon looked over.

Yunjin’s expression was composed, but her fingers were folded too tightly against the edge of the machine. “It is a real project.”

There were a dozen ways to answer that, and all of them felt wrong.

Nayeon stood because sitting had become unbearable. She crossed to the side table, picked up the empty water glass she had forgotten she’d poured before the call, then set it back down untouched.

“That’s not fair,” she said finally.

Yunjin’s gaze followed her, calm and cutting in equal measure. “What part?”

The question was so quiet that it took Nayeon a second to realize she was being invited to specify the exact shape of the thing she was accusing. Life was rude like that.

“She joined late on purpose,” Nayeon said.

Yunjin did not answer immediately.

Nayeon could hear how it sounded as soon as she said it. Not wrong, necessarily. Just revealing in a way she had not intended.

“Maybe,” Yunjin said.

Nayeon let out a breath. “She knew.”

“She looked like she knew.”

Nayeon stopped pacing.

The distinction landed cleanly. Accurate. Irritatingly restrained. Very Yunjin.

For a moment the office felt too small to hold both the old name and the new silence between them.

“She didn’t say anything,” Yunjin added.

“No.”

“She could have.”

The words were neutral. Not a defense. Not kindness toward Mina. Just fact.

Nayeon laughed once, thinly. “That would require courage.”

Something flickered over Yunjin’s face at that. Not disagreement. Something more complicated and briefly painful.

Nayeon saw it and hated herself a little.

Because she knew what Yunjin might be hearing underneath the sentence.
What other conversations it could belong to.

She turned away first. “Forget it.”

“I’m not trying to fight with you.”

Nayeon looked back over her shoulder. “I know.”

And she did.

That was, as usual, the problem.

Yunjin set the laptop aside and stood from the filing cabinet. “You don’t have to explain whatever that was to me right now.”

Right now.

The phrase made Nayeon’s pulse jump in a way she did not appreciate.

“But?” she asked.

Yunjin’s eyes held hers. “But if you keep acting like nothing happened when something clearly did, I’m going to get tired.”

There it was.

Not a threat.
Not a raised voice.
Not even an accusation.

Just a line set down with care.

Nayeon stared at her.

Yunjin did not move, did not soften it, did not apologize for speaking plainly.

The sight of that steadiness did something profoundly unhelpful to Nayeon’s chest.

“She looked at me,” Nayeon said.

The admission felt ridiculous as soon as it left her mouth. Childish. Incomplete.

Yunjin, to her credit, did not treat it that way.

“Yes,” she said. “She did.”

“I hated it.”

Yunjin’s expression changed by a degree. Something in it loosened, not enough to become relief, but enough to become less sharp.

“She looked like she was trying to decide whether you were real,” Yunjin said.

Nayeon blinked.

That had not been what she expected.

Or perhaps it had been, somewhere lower and uglier, and hearing it voiced by Yunjin made it too visible to dismiss.

“I don’t care what she thinks,” Nayeon said.

This was, at best, half true.

Yunjin’s mouth tipped very slightly. “Sure.”

Nayeon narrowed her eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”

“No,” Yunjin said. “I’m surviving it with style.”

That won a startled laugh out of Nayeon before she could prevent it.

The sound loosened the room by an inch.

Yunjin’s gaze dropped then, briefly, to Nayeon’s wrist where the bracelet charm rested against her skin. She did that sometimes, Nayeon had noticed. Looked at it as if there were something there she was measuring against.

This time, though, Yunjin said only, “Do you still want to do the test shoot?”

Nayeon thought of saying no.

Not because she meant it. Because the idea existed now, a bright emergency exit painted on the inside of her skull.

No.
Decline.
Walk away.
Let some other studio photograph Mina into whatever future she was now building.

But even forming the thought made something raw and furious rise in her.

No would mean Mina still had the power to reroute her life.
No would mean surrender disguised as wisdom.
No would mean taking Yunjin’s fear and calling it fate.

And underneath all of that was the most irritating truth of all:
the work itself still mattered to her.

“Yes,” Nayeon said.

Yunjin absorbed the answer without visible surprise. “Okay.”

“You think that’s a mistake.”

“I think,” Yunjin said carefully, “that you should know what you’re choosing every time you choose it.”

The sentence settled over Nayeon like a hand she wasn’t prepared to take.

Outside the office, Minji appeared at the doorway with the sort of face people wore when they had walked into an atmosphere and wanted to know whether it was safe to continue being alive inside it.

“Quick question,” she said. “On a scale from one to very fired, how bad would it be if I told the print guy downstairs his font choices look like a war crime?”

Neither of them answered immediately.

Minji glanced between them and made the sign of the cross at no one in particular. “I’m going to assume medium bad.”

She vanished before Nayeon could reply.

Yunjin looked down, and to Nayeon’s immense relief, laughed quietly.

There it was again. That tiny release. That reminder that not every fracture had to widen at once.

Nayeon exhaled some tension she had not realized she was carrying in her shoulders. “Medium bad,” she said.

“Probably.”

They stood in the office for another moment, the call now over but still somehow present in the furniture. On the desk. In the legal pad. In the small stiffness that had not entirely left Nayeon’s spine.

Yunjin picked up her laptop. “I’m going to finish the color corrections before Minji starts applying moral philosophy to serif fonts.”

Nayeon nodded. “Good plan.”

Yunjin moved toward the door, then stopped with one hand against the frame and looked back.

There was no drama in the way she said the next words. No sharpened edge. If anything, that made them worse.

“I know she hurt you,” Yunjin said. “I also know she’ll probably try to act like history makes her entitled to more of you than everybody else gets.”

Nayeon went still.

Yunjin’s face remained calm. Not because she felt calm, Nayeon thought. Because calm was what she had chosen to be.

“She doesn’t,” Yunjin said.

Then she left the office before Nayeon could answer.

For a long minute Nayeon remained where she was, staring at the doorway she had disappeared through as if something else might come back through it. An easier reply, maybe. A version of herself better built for moments like that.

Nothing did.

Eventually she sat down again.

The legal pad lay where she had left it, notes neat and legible and far too reasonable for the shape of the afternoon. She looked down at the page and saw, between timeline and access windows, the place where her pen had dug hard enough to emboss the paper underneath.

Mina.

Just the name.
Written once.
Pressed through.

Nayeon tore the page off, folded it in half without thinking, then unfolded it again because that was absurd and she was not sixteen and nobody had any right to reduce her to symbolic stationery.

Her phone buzzed.

She looked at it.

Jihyo: how bad was it

Nayeon stared at the message.

Then typed:

Nayeon: define bad

The reply came almost immediately.

Jihyo: if you’re answering like that it was bad

Nayeon looked through the glass wall of the office.

In the back room, Yunjin sat at one of the editing stations with her head bent toward the screen, posture steady, one hand resting near the keyboard. From here she looked calm. Entirely composed. Like someone who belonged exactly where she was and had never once been made to feel uncertain inside her own life.

Nayeon knew better now than to trust appearance that easily.

She looked back down at her phone.

Nayeon: she joined the call
Nayeon: it’s real now

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Returned.

Jihyo: i’m coming by later
Jihyo: don’t do anything stupid before then

Nayeon almost smiled.

Nayeon: deeply offended by how little faith everyone has in me

Jihyo: i have faith
Jihyo: just not in your decision-making when feelings are involved

That one she did not answer.

Instead she set the phone facedown and looked once more toward the back room.

Yunjin did not look up.

The studio light was beginning to change again, evening drawing itself across walls and glass and the polished floorboards. In it, the whole place seemed softer than it was. More forgiving. Like a photograph taken at the right hour could make even difficult things look survivable.

Nayeon leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for just a second.

When she opened them, Mina was still gone from the screen.

Which, somehow, was not even close to the same thing as gone.