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Lily has never been good at keeping her love quiet.
It shows in the way she lights up when Haewon enters a room. In the way her voice goes soft when she talks about Haewon. In the way she went from making a playlist for Haewon to writing songs about wanting to love her loud.
But here's the thing, she doesn't think she needs to hide it anymore.
Because as Heavy Serenade comeback promotion started lately, Haewon has been looking at her differently.
It started small. A lingering glance during dance practice that held a beat longer than necessary. A text sent at midnight with no context except "couldn't sleep. thinking of you." A hand on Lily's lower back while they walked through a crowded airport, protective and sure, like she was claiming something, or someone.
Lily noticed. Of course she noticed. She has spent ten years cataloguing every micro-expression that crosses Haewon's face, and this was new.
They were in the van last week when Haewon reached over and took her hand. Not for a camera. Not for a fansign. Just driving back from a schedule at night, both of them were exhausted. Haewon didn't say anything. Just wrapped her hand around Lily’s and kept her eyes on the window.
Lily's heart stopped. Started again. Beat wrong for the next three hours.
She lay awake that night replaying it. The warmth of Haewon's palm. The way her thumb traced small circles against Lily's skin. This is real, Lily told herself. This is finally getting real.
She fell asleep smiling.
-
The next week was a dream Lily didn't want to wake from.
Haewon started sitting next to her at every meal. Started waiting for her after recording sessions, leaning against the doorframe with a small smile, her eyes crinkling. Started saying "my Lily" in that low voice that made Lily's knees go weak.
During a live stream, Haewon read a comment that said "Haewon looks at Lily like she’s something precious" and instead of making a weird face and moving on like she usually would, she turned to Lily, took her time to look at her, and said:
"She is."
The comments exploded. Lily's face went red. She laughed it off and said something about Haewon always being such a sweet affectionate girl.
-
They were filming variety content for the comeback. Haewon was at it again, laughing, teasing, finding every excuse to pat Lily's head, fix her hair, rest her chin on her shoulder. The staff murmured. The other members exchanged knowing looks. Lily felt like she was floating.
Between takes, Lily went to the stylist. She stopped on her way back. She could hear Haewon talking to one of the managers.
"The fans are going to lose their minds over that shoulder moment, right? I saw the camera zoom in."
A laugh. The manager's voice: "You're really good at this."
Haewon chuckled and replied, "Ten years…”
Lily’s heart skipped a beat, is she going to say how well we know each other after ten years? Or admit the ten years of yearning?
“…Ten years of practice, of course I’m good."
She said it easily. Ever so lightly. Like she was discussing the weather.
Lily's hand froze on the door handle.
The fans. Practice. Good at this.
Not how we are soulmates. Not I wanted to be close to her. Not anything that had ever crossed Lily's mind in all the times she'd reached for Haewon without a camera in sight. She was just referring to the ten years she spent in this industry, not the ten years they have been each other’s halves.
She walked back in. Sat down. Smiled when Haewon immediately scooted closer and linked their arms for the next segment.
It's fine, she told herself. She's just aware of the cameras. That's her job. It doesn't mean it's not real underneath.
She spent the next few days repeating that and almost believed it.
-
She should have noticed the pattern.
She's not dumb. In fact, she has always been smart. But love, real, desperate, decade-long love, has a way of editing the footage. It cuts the scenes that don't fit the narrative. It mutes the audio that disturbs the song you want to hear.
So Lily didn't notice that Haewon's midnight texts only came on nights before filming. She didn't notice that the hand-holding in the van happened after a manager mentioned the practice was being documented for a behind-the-scenes DVD. She didn't notice that "my Lily" slipped out most often when staff members were around, cameras raised, ready to capture the moment for content.
Or maybe, just maybe, she didn't notice because she didn't want to.
-
For a while, that worked. But once the walls start cracking, they crumble fast.
The six of them were on the dorm floor, sitting in a circle with soju bottles around. It was past 1 a.m. The kind of hour where the air gets honest and the guards come down. One of them started a conversation about dating rumors in the industry. Who gets caught. Who doesn't. Whether any of it is ever real.
Haewon got tipsy. Lily could tell by the way she leaned back on her hands and the way her laugh came looser. She was next to Lily, cross-legged, her knee brushing Lily's thigh every time she shifted. The contact was grounding, familiar. Lily let herself lean into it.
Then Bae said something about a senior group whose “ship” had turned out to be real, and the girls gasped and asked for details. The conversation spun into whether fans could actually tell the difference between real and manufactured chemistry.
Haewon laughed. A small, knowing sound. She took a sip from her glass and said, without looking at anyone in particular:
"I mean, it's all kind of fake though, isn't it?"
The room didn't go quiet. That’s even worse. No one gasped or objected or even looked surprised. Sullyoon hummed in agreement. Kyujin nodded.
Lily's glass stopped halfway to her mouth.
Haewon continued, casual as anything. "The flirting. The ships. Fans love it, so we give it to them. That's the job." She shrugged, refilling her glass. "I thought we all knew that."
She said it so lightly. Like she assumed everyone in that circle operated by the same script she did.
Lily laughed.
She laughed and took a sip of her soju and didn't look at Haewon's knee against her thigh or her own reflection in the dark window across the room.
The conversation moved on. Someone changed the topic. Lily stayed in the circle, nodding at the right moments, and the whole time her mind was replaying it in a loop: That's the job. I thought we all knew that.
Not a single pause. Not a single glance in Lily's direction. No acknowledgment that for one of the people in that room, the moments might not have been a job at all. Either Haewon didn't know, which is impossible because she knows Lily better than herself, or she used that to her advantage.
We're all professionals here. To Haewon, it was a screenplay. A show. A skillset Haewon honed over ten years of knowing exactly what the fans wanted to see.
And Lily, the hopeless romantic, the trusting unnie who would make exceptions for Haewon without a thought, had been the easiest target. The one who already leaned in, met her halfway. The one who would easily make this “show” believable.
-
She started noticing everything after that.
The way Haewon's hand always found hers when there was a cameraman within fifty meters.
The fact that Haewon only played Speak Now on guitar for Lily during a fansign, never privately.
The fact that the only reason Haewon wrote Lily’s jokes down was for content.
The way Haewon's eyes went just slightly cooler when they were truly alone. Not cold, Haewon wasn't heartless, but neutral. Like Lily was a friend. Just a roommate and nothing else implied. Someone she'd known for ten years and felt comfortably familiar with, nothing more.
The truth was clear before Lily’s eyes. After ten years, she finally realized it.
-
And yet.
And yet when Haewon crawled into her bed at 2 a.m. last night, claiming she'd had a nightmare and couldn't sleep alone, Lily lifted the covers without hesitation.
Haewon curled into her side. Small and warm. Her breath evened out within minutes.
Lily lay awake. Staring at the ceiling. Feeling the weight of Haewon's head on her shoulder and knowing that tomorrow there would be a camera somewhere, and Haewon would mention this. "Lily unnie let me sleep in her bed. She's so warm." The fans would scream. The clips would circulate. And Lily would smile and play along like her heart wasn't a bruise she kept pressing on purpose.
But right now, in the dark, when no one was watching, Haewon was still here. Still breathing softly against her neck. Still real, even if the reason wasn't.
And the thing is, as much as Lily wouldn’t admit it, she would take this over nothing any day. Over a Haewon who never looks at her at all. Over a universe where she doesn’t get to feel, even for a moment, even if it’s not genuine, what it might be like to be loved by Oh Haewon.
She knows it’s pathetic. She knows she’s a yearner in the saddest possible way. But ten years is a long time to love someone, and Lily has built a whole cathedral out of the scraps Haewon throws her. A hug lifting her off the ground during a fansign. How Haewon grabbed her waist to pull her closer on stage. That one time when Haewon fell asleep on her shoulder in the waiting room and Lily didn’t move for an hour, barely breathing, memorizing the weight of her.
Lily closed her eyes.
She could feel the fragile line beneath them. Had felt it for years, if she was honest with herself. A tightrope stretched over something vast and quiet. She has been walking it so long she'd forgotten there was anything underneath.
Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I'll stop leaning in. Tomorrow I'll stop letting her use me like this.
But even as she thought it, her arm tightened around Haewon's sleeping form. Holding on. Holding on to nothing, yet everything.
I thought I had you figured out.