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Minnie flashed her brightest smile at the dishevelled staff member approaching from the opposite direction as she wandered down the hallway. An idol’s smile, untouched by stress or anxiety. The staff member smiled back in turn, shyly bowing her head as she passed by Minnie’s shoulder without a word, and then Minnie was alone again with the empty corridor ahead of her.
The smile sank immediately from her face like a rock hitting water. Instead, she glanced at her phone with both eyebrows pinched together. Updates flitted across the lockscreen seconds apart, and she scrolled down, down, until – there it was.
Storm has passed through, the last text read as it blinked back up on screen. Minnie exhaled.
She’d been waiting for it, anticipating the final all-clear from her manager, as she wandered from room to room for a distraction. Some way to kill time while Soyeon and Yuqi worked things out.
Shuhua and Miyeon had already made themselves scarce when the first winds hit the weather vane in that too-small dressing room. Minnie, bleeding-heart dummy that she was, had tried to divert the brewing argument. She’d figured, okay, they’d been roommates together; three of them in an apartment for years when they were younger. She could middle-ground her way through another fight.
Even though Yuqi had been in a pensive mood since they left the car, before they even went up on stage. Not speaking unless spoken too – a major red flag for her. And even though Soyeon had led them backstage with her lip caught between her teeth, the usual indicator that she was stewing on ten different things that needed immediate attention or she’d self-immolate on the spot.
It was always going to turn into something. Like it always did.
But Minnie tried.
So when Soyeon picked up a thread about Yuqi’s missed steps during their performance, the way she wasn’t syncing up quite right at the chorus, Minnie piped up that, oops, actually, she herself had stumbled enough to throw Yuqi out of place and caused the problem. Soyeon didn’t buy it. And when Yuqi grunted in a flat, dismissive way and held her phone up to her face, Minnie smiled and asked if they should go for hot-pot later. All of them, wouldn’t that be nice?
Miyeon tried to encourage the idea, to no effect. Shuhua stared at Yuqi, and then at Soyeon, and then offered Minnie a blank look and walked out of the room. She was helpful like that. Or maybe she was the wisest of them all.
Within minutes Soyeon was standing too close to Yuqi, scowling up into her face to get a reaction, some acknowledgement of her constructive criticism. And then Yuqi was breathing in through her nostrils loudly and the room soon filled with their overlaying bickering. They weren’t listening to each other at all, much less Minnie or Miyeon.
Minnie sighed and pressed her phone up to her forehead, tapping the corner against her temple as she considered. They’d been at it for half an hour, and she’d ducked out just as Yuqi was pressing her hands over her ears, Soyeon’s finger jabbing her in the chest forcefully. Thirty minutes just to shut them up; that was even longer than usual.
She really hoped the coast was clear. Her jacket had been left behind, along with Shuhua’s purse. She’d been fielding texts from Shuhua this whole time asking her if she’d gone back already, could she please go back first, no really, please, somebody had to take one for the team. That was always going to be Minnie.
Damn it.
Minnie’s pace slowed as she reached the dressing room again, narrowing into an awkward shuffle. The door was closed, hiding whatever mess lay inside, but she couldn’t hear them shouting anymore. That was something.
With a chagrined smile on her face, she turned the handle and pushed her way into the room. A greeting hovered at her lips, but it lodged there when she took in what was happening.
Everyone else had evacuated around the same time as Minnie; even her manager, who she’d left lingering outside the door waiting for peace to resume. When those two had something to get off their chests, there was really no use trying to get in the middle of it. Even though Minnie still tried at times. Often they were left to sort through their business alone until they ran out of steam and made up naturally, as long as they kept it out of the public eye. They were both stubborn, both opinionated, and they butted heads like two rams fighting to establish dominance.
So Minnie couldn’t really bridge the gap between what she’d escaped from thirty minutes ago, their voices hitting a fever pitch, and the sight in front of her.
Because now Soyeon was lounging on the sofa, Minnie’s jacket thrown over the back of it beside her head. She had her phone in one hand, lighting up her face from below as she tapped at the screen, while her free hand was carding through strands of Yuqi’s bleach-blonde hair. Scratching intermittently at Yuqi’s scalp, where her head was planted in Soyeon’s lap.
“Um,” Minnie said quietly, as she hovered in the doorway. She didn’t know what else to say to that.
She gawked at the back of Yuqi’s head, because her face was pressed to Soyeon’s stomach, turned away from the bright overhead lights. She was lying on her side, knees folded up loosely as Soyeon ran a gentle hand over her hair and down behind her ear. Based on the sluggish rise and fall of Yuqi’s shoulders as she breathed, she was completely passed out.
When Minnie spoke again, if only to repeat her earlier um but a little louder, Soyeon’s head snapped up from her phone to the open doorway, eyes wide and caught. Minnie scrunched her expression up, as if to say, huh? Soyeon offered an awkward smile in return. She lifted one shoulder up in a slow shrug, and pressed a finger to her lips with the hand that was still holding her phone. Yuqi snuffled quietly in her sleep, barely moving.
Still taken aback, Minnie could only nod and close her mouth. She glanced behind her into the hall in case she needed to deter anyone else from approaching, but there was still nobody around. In the meantime, Soyeon had tilted her screen back over and tapped a message out with just her thumb.
It flashed through to Minnie’s phone as she turned forward. Migraines again.
And Minnie understood, just a little better, how Yuqi could go from barking in Soyeon’s face for “some fucking space please” to lying there with one hand fisted in Soyeon’s t-shirt, nose buried against her stomach like it could hide her from the world. She really was like a kid sometimes.
Minnie typed a quick response to Soyeon, saying she’d tell the others not to wait up. She did, however, snatch Shuhua’s bag up from the dressing table before back-pedalling out of the room and pulling the door gently closed again. Her jacket would have to remain captive for now.
It was only when she’d turned the corner into the connecting hallway that Minnie realised – damn – she really ought to have taken a picture while she had the chance. The others were never going to believe this.