Chapter Text
It’s not quite midnight when Rui opens the door to the room that Wumuti shares with Hyun.
“Hyunnie—” she’s starting to say even before the door has finished swinging all the way open, her voice sweet and trilling and playful.
“He’s not here,” Wumuti says from the bed, and also, “Can’t you knock?”
Rui ignores that last part as not important for her. She pouts a little.
Although Wumuti had looked up when Rui first entered the room, she’d gone right back to what she was doing before, looking through a packet of papers with another pile next to her on the bed.
There’s a thin, wire-framed pair of reading glasses on her nose, and Rui doesn’t know why she pauses with her hand on the door instead of leaving.
“What, you’re too addicted to work now that you have to bring it home now? You can’t just leave it at the company?” Rui half-jokes.
Wumuti sighs through her nose. There’s a moment where Rui doesn’t know if Wumuti is going to ignore her—that’s the thing she hates the most—but in another moment, Wumuti is pulling off her glasses and rubbing at the high bridge of her nose like her head pains her, and Rui feels a short, sharp twinge of emotion that feels like being pinched.
“Rui, please don’t start. Can you just... wait for Hyun somewhere else instead of taking it out on me?”
The pinch in Rui’s chest turns into a spark that flares up into a hot blaze because that’s not fair. She wasn’t.
“Taking it out on you? I thought this is called caring for you.”
Rui throws it out defiantly, the words caught somewhere between a taunt and a challenge. It pokes Wumuti between the ribs, riling up the part of her that wants to scruff Rui beneath her in a way that would only be even remotely okay if they were both animals, which they’re not.
Rui stands there, expectant. She looks pale, Wumuti thinks. With a pang, Wumuti wonders if Rui has been doing alright.
Things have been odd between them since the other night. It’s not exactly surprising.
They’d all seen each other in a new light, and it’s hard to forget certain things, even if good things had mostly come of it.
Hyun and Haru had both bounced back remarkably well, taking it in stride, but the same couldn’t be said for the older members.
Ever since that fateful game of truth or dare there’s been something weird between the two of them, a kind of charge in the air. It’s not like Wumuti can’t feel it or even that she’s trying to ignore it on purpose. It’s just that she also has so many other things to worry about. Their comeback is just around the corner. There are so many things to keep track of, so many balls in the air, and she has to be the one not to let them fall, and it’s just—she can’t deal with Rui right now.
If she has to deal with one thing more, she’s really going to lose it, but she’s sure it’s not good form to burden her members with feelings like that, so she keeps it to herself.
Not that she has anyone else to talk to about these things. The last person she could talk to about it would be Jaeyong, friends though they are, given their professional relationship. A peer would be best, but it’s not like she’s close enough to any other group leaders in the industry to bring it up.
Maybe Zhang Hao, but she can imagine the look of disappointment on his face, and besides, he has enough problems of his own for Wumuti to want to burden him with her own—and Wumuti can’t even begin to imagine talking to her mom about this.
The silence stretches on for too long until any possibility of making it out of this conversation without injuries to either side has foreclosed. Wumuti has always been good at leaving things until the last minute.
Wumuti gives up on the sheaf of contract amendments in her hands, adding them to the despairingly large stack beside her. Her voice sounds almost pleading to her own ears as she says, “Look, not right now, please? I know you care about me. I just…” She makes a frustrated noise as the words don’t come out the way she intended. “I’m telling you I can’t do this right now,” she finishes firmly.
Rui’s face crumples with a flash of hurt that fills Wumuti with a stab of grief before it’s neatly tucked away again.
“Fine,” Rui says. “Don’t stay up too late, hyung.”
She closes the door behind her hard enough to rattle the door frame and make Wumuti flinch when she leaves.
“What am I going to do with this child?” Wumuti mutters to herself once she’s alone.
She picks at her cuticles restlessly until she realizes she’s doing it.
There’s a feeling burning in the back of her eyes. It feels suspiciously like tears, and Wumuti feels suspiciously like she might lose it if she lets herself. There’s a swirling, despairing feeling of panic rising up, and Wumuti knows immediately that it can’t be allowed to win.
Wumuti pushes it firmly aside, blinking her eyes quickly to clear away the tears and blowing out a long and shuddering deep breath. One doesn’t do anything so she tries another, and then another. She closes her eyes and pictures herself blowing all the bad feelings away.
Eventually, she opens her eyes again, and she’s alone. She’s herself, in a little room, a little idol with a lot of work to do. She drags in one more juddery breath through a slightly stuffed nose, and her stomach growls loudly.
Once she feels a little better, she picks up the paper again and grabs her highlighter to annotate it.