past, present, and future | hwang hyunjin

t e n

c h a p t e r   t e n

I collapsed onto my bed, letting out a deep, long sigh. "Sana, let me rest please."

"Ari, you can't just talk to The Yeji and The Lia of The ITZY and not tell me what you talked about." Sana pressed.

"I can. It's private information," I sighed again, clutching my face. "Since they wanted to talk to me in private, you can assume that they don't want you to know anything about it."

"Oh, and I also want to know why your eyes are puffy and red," Sana peered at my face curiously, my swollen eyes meeting her round, concerned ones. "Were you crying?"

"Ah, that's a story for another day," I gave her a halfhearted thumbs-up and then buried my face into my pillow. My makeup got smudged all over it, but at this point, all the gods had turned against me, so honestly, who cared?

"Your makeup-" Sana started, but I cut her off.

"Yup, I know. I don't care," I mumbled.

"Ari, we have a Music Bank performance today!" This time, exasperation leaked into Sana's tone. "How are we going to perform if you're like this?"

"I'll recover in time," I responded. "It's at 5PM. It's currently, like what, 10AM?"

"Still, I'm worried about you. We have to rehearse beforehand too, you know? Meaning we have to be there at 3:30. Plus, we need to record a dance challenge," Sana sighed.

I didn't respond to that, she was right. I did still have a lot of duties to fulfill as an idol. I couldn't let my personal life get into the way of my career.

"Alright, fine," I sat up. "Well, in short, Yeji just wanted to know what kind of relationship I have with her broth- Hyunjin," I quickly caught myself. I didn't want the fact that they were really siblings to spread. "So, basically Lia saw us that one day I started crying, and she told Yeji, and they were both really curious about it so they asked me. And I panicked, told them that Hyunjin didn't mean anything to me, and he heard everything that I said. End of story."

"Wait what?" Sana's eyes showed intense worry. "So he heard you say that you didn't care about him?"

"Pretty much," I sighed. "Okay, we can discuss that another day," I put my hand over Sana's hand before she could say anything else. Let's go touch up our makeup, record the dance challenge, and rehearse, shall we?"

Sana didn't contradict me, and just nodded. I could tell it was out of concern for me, which I really was grateful for. "Okay, let's go." She said, taking my hand. Then she called for Zoe and Jeona.

"Coming!" Zoe called back, rushing through the kitchen entrance, dragging a tired and yawning Jeona who probably was taking a short nap behind her. "Oh, what happened to you?" Zoe stopped as she saw me and my smudged makeup. Then her eyes trailed down to the makeup-smudged pillow beside me. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll tell you later," I replied. "C'mon, we have to go do some makeup touch-ups."

"More like an entire makeover for you," Jeona joked. After receiving a glare from me, she laughed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Please forgive me!" She put her hands up in mock surrender. Her laughing spread to me as well.

"I'm gonna go wash my face," I announced before swiftly exiting the scene and going into the bathroom.

After all the final preparations were done, we all walked towards the dance practice room together, where we were met by makeup artists who redid my makeup and touched up those of the other members.

"Alright, we'll set up the camera," A staff member called. "You just get ready. We'll do Ari and Sani in the first, Zeri and Jenni in the second, and then we'll do one with all the members sitting, and one with all the members standing. In that one, the camera will pan towards each member as you'll all be standing in different spots. Got it?"