His name is David. His look is douchebag hipster. In my mind he’s writes film critiques, and mansplains philosophy. I really want to give him a cigarette but Cats and Soup does not have that costume option. I need help giving a room that fits the personality I gave him.
I’m 24, and this is the first time I’ve ever really dated someone, so I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed and would appreciate advice from other Catholic women.
I’ve been seeing a guy who is 27, and I genuinely like him. We’ve had a good time together, and I was excited about where things were going. But recently we got into a conversation about Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and some of the media he consumes, and it really unsettled me.
I want to be clear that my issue is not simply that he has different political opinions than I do. I don’t expect someone I date to agree with me on every foreign-policy question, and I think criticism of Israel, AIPAC, military aid, etc. can all be legitimate.
What started worrying me was some of the material he sent me and the way he talked about it. He sent me a post that made a very conspiratorial claim about a U.S.–Israel defense initiative and included a line implying a powerful government official would “undoubtedly be a Jew.” He also said that Congress and the executive branch are basically captured by AIPAC.
He later forwarded me a list of books, essays, and podcasts about Israel from a friend. At first I assumed these were sources he personally followed, but he later told me he hadn’t actually read any of them and had simply forwarded what his friend sent him. That made me feel somewhat better but also confused me because I don’t really understand forwarding politically charged material without knowing what it contains.
One of the podcasts he sent was by Darryl Cooper. I looked Cooper up afterward and found his controversial statements about WWII and the Holocaust. I explained to the guy I’m dating that Cooper has framed intentional Nazi starvation and mass killing in a way that makes it sound more like a logistical failure. His immediate response was something along the lines of, “Maybe it was a logistical problem," and that mass murder is often reactionary rather than planned.
I explained that Nazi policy toward Soviet POWs and Jews is extremely well documented and involved deliberate starvation and systematic killing. He responded “understood” and said he would listen to Cooper’s comments himself for context.
What bothered me was not that he wanted to research it for himself. I actually respect that. What bothered me was that his first instinct seemed to be to offer a possible defense of that framing before knowing the history, especially after some of the other material he had sent me.
Then he quickly changed the subject to normal/lighthearted conversation. I eventually told him that the entire conversation had made me question whether we were compatible and canceled our plans to see each other the next day.
He seemed confused and said he had not disagreed with me about the Holocaust, that he normally gives researchers the benefit of the doubt until he looks into something himself, and that the other material had just been forwarded by his friend. He also apologized for changing the subject and said he simply didn’t want to talk about the Holocaust at that moment.
Now I feel incredibly conflicted.
Part of me feels like I may have misunderstood him and reacted too quickly. Another part of me feels that some of his own statements still genuinely concern me, especially the willingness to entertain conspiratorial ideas and the way he initially reacted to the Holocaust discussion.
As a Catholic, this matters deeply to me. Antisemitism and the deliberate dehumanization of an entire people are moral issues to me, not merely political disagreements. At the same time, I don’t want to falsely accuse someone of beliefs they don’t actually hold or refuse to give someone charity and the opportunity to clarify themselves.
I also feel guilty because I really like him, and because this was my first experience dating someone. I don’t know whether I’m being prudent and protecting an important moral boundary, or whether fear caused me to make assumptions too quickly.
How would you discern this as a Catholic woman? Would you have another conversation to understand what he actually believes, or would the things he has already said be enough of a red flag for you to walk away?
The night settles over the building like a lullaby. Melodic and steady, but carrying the quiet insistence of sleep and nothing beyond it.
At this hour, the dormitories breathe to a rhythm older than the earth beneath their foundations. A pulse moves below concrete and linoleum, winding beneath the buried piping and fluorescent veins before coalescing with the slumbering souls it deems most ready. She can almost hear them all: the sleeping children held in exquisite tension, their bodies tucked neatly in rows. Tonight they will not dream of sugarplums. They will dream of the final lineup, of where they are needed and where they must go.
She moves through the corridor without haste, steaming tea warming her palms. The overhead lights flicker in greeting, each one waking as she approaches and dimming once she has passed, escorting her along the familiar course of her evening pilgrimage.
This place remembers.
Every wall, tile, and mirror has absorbed too much to be considered lifeless. The building knows the weight of her footsteps and the cadence of her breathing. Even the ceiling lights have learned her route, winking down at her one by one as she passes beneath them. The floor hums under her heels in a pleasurable purr. The vibration travels upward through her bones, tender in recognition.
She arrives at her office and slips in without sound.
The air inside is cool and recycled and sterile to anyone else. To her, it carries a familiar flavor: citrus cleaner, the sharp bite of spring air against cooling sweat, and something beneath both. Something deeper. Older. A sweetness that has long since ripened into musk. Whelp to bitch. Kit to queen.
The faux fur of her office chair grazes the backs of her legs as she settles in for observation. Before her, the screens awaken in orderly rows, their pale light unfurling across her face.
Dormitory 2. Six frames.
Se-bin has already turned to the wall. Good. She is always the first to still herself. The others mirror her without realizing they do, their breaths gradually falling into alignment until the room appears to possess one set of lungs divided among six bodies.
Hannah lies flat on her back, eyes open and unfocused. She blinks once, slowly. Then again. Not quite in rhythm yet, but close.
She leans in and gazes at the pixels that make Hannah up on the screen. She is supple clay still. Soft, warm, and pliable, but there is resistance beneath the surface, faint and quivering. A stubborn little seam that refuses to lie flat.
She should be further along.
The others have quieted, drifting toward convergence like leaves circling a drain, each revolution drawing them nearer to the dark mouth at its center. Hannah remains at the edge, trembling in the current, a fraction of a beat behind.
She must settle soon; otherwise, the current will move on without her.
She slides her gaze across the monitor.
The ceiling camera in the top-right never wanders; its unblinking eye rests on the elevator for floor nine and the corridor that feeds from it. At the far end stands a door that has remained closed far more often than it has opened, but the handle is softly burnished by those who know it.
The girls feel what lives there, even if they do not know it exists.
It reveals itself in the pause that overtakes them in the hallway. In the catch of their reflection in dark windows. In the way their voices soften when the air changes around them, thickening with the presence of something their minds cannot name. Occasionally, a faint milk-sweet tang seeps through the building. It moves beneath doors and through ventilation shafts, curling around sleeping faces and settling on empty tongues. Wherever it passes, hollow bellies cramp with sudden hunger.
The body senses what the mind cannot.
She raises the tea to her lips. It has gone cold. The bitterness coats her tongue and leaves a fine film across her teeth. She welcomes it. The sharpness keeps the edges of her mind clean. Beyond the office, the hum deepens. A single note, too low to be heard clearly, travels through the steel beams and buried pipes. The building takes it up chamber by chamber until every wall seems to vibrate with restrained song.
As a trainee, she feared that sound. It gathered around her like a dense, narcotic vapor, smothering her until no air seemed able to reach her lungs.
Now, it soothes her.
Its warmth settles over every inch of exposed skin, soft and enveloping, less like sound and more like a touch of an unseen presence. It is the same tone she has begun to hear beneath the girls’ voices, threaded delicately through their speech. She heard it in Se-bin last week, when the girl corrected another trainee without prompting. It was not in her words but in the way they left her throat: a pinning pressure, patient and certain, waiting for what little strength remained to yield.
Yes.
They are beginning to take shape.
The monitors blur for a moment. Her vision trails behind itself, and time briefly forgets how to keep pace. The image swirls and doubles, then slips neatly back into place. A harmless lapse.
Onscreen, Hannah rolls onto her side. Her breathing slows. Se-bin does not move. Their limbs remain separate, each body confined to its own narrow bed, but their rhythm begins to merge. Breath folding into breath. Pulse answering pulse. Six small streams bending toward the same dark maw.
Down the drain they go.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
I am in the practice room, but nothing sits right. The lights come from nowhere, and I can’t find their source. The shadows are all wrong; the chairs cast shadows in one direction, while a piano's stretches completely perpendicular to them. Since when did this room have a piano?
I don’t have a shadow at all.
The mirrors on the wall reach all the way up, and I can’t see where they end. They reflect versions of the room that don’t match this one: no chairs, no piano, the walls painted a creamy, pale pink instead of the wood paneling I know is behind me.
My reflection is there, but slightly off-angle from where I stand. Her body is wound taut, like a stray cat about to bolt. She blinks at me, slow and deliberate, punctuation at the end of a sentence only she can hear. The expression carries no meaning I understand but feels too measured and aware. Like it has been practiced. Like she has done this before.
It is a performance.
I would know.
Her eyes leave mine and focus on a figure standing far to one side of her. Her comforting gaze hardens into something cold and animalistic.
Hannah is reflected to my left.
Pretty Hannah.
Her face is blurred, as if I am looking at her through sleepy, watery eyes. Her lips move in slow, stuttering shapes. I hear no sound, but I feel the rhythm of my name being spoken into the void. A moment of clarity reveals her. She glances between me, my reflection beside her, and the room behind me. Then she runs toward the glass separating us, hands silently banging on the barrier. Her face changes from frustration to desperation to fear, each expression slipping into the next before the first has fully disappeared. Her eyes are glassy, wide, and wet.
Hannah is still pretty when she cries.
A hum reverberates through the room. I do not hear it begin; it seems to have been sounding long before I noticed it. The atmosphere changes. A cool, refreshing breeze fills the stagnant air. Like a window opening to a warm spring day after a long winter, the smell of wet dirt settles around me.
A warmth gathers behind me, like a soft fur blanket pulled over bare shoulders. It seeps into my muscles, loosening everything I did not know was tight. Heavenly relief reverberates through me, so whole that it nearly makes me cry.
My jaw unclenches. My shoulders sink. My spine, always held stiff from training, from posture drills and mirror corrections, finally slackens. The tension in my calves, my throat, even the arches of my feet—it all dissolves like sugar in hot tea. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until it leaves me in a slow, trembling exhale, and my eyes flutter shut.
It is the kind of comfort that doesn’t ask questions. That doesn’t need a reason. The kind that knows exactly where to find you, even in a place like this. Especially in a place like this. And yet, somewhere deep within, in the very pit of my stomach, a part of me squirms. The warmth is too perfect. Too precise. I glance back at the mirror.
Hannah is gone, not even a handprint left on glass to acknowledge that she ever existed. My reflection is smiling warmly at me, her eyes twinkling as if saying, “Isn’t that better? The problem is all taken care of now.” She drinks in my reaction with a precision and ease that comes only with a long-standing ritual.
She’s studied me, filed away every flinch, every breath, and every thought. I can’t tell if she’s watching over me or marking me, if I am being guarded or hunted. I only know she isn’t the whole of it. She is one shard of something larger, and I do not know how far the rest of it reaches. A fragment. An eye left here by whatever really owns this place.
But she is me. She can’t hurt me without hurting herself. Even if she’s self-serving, that still means my well-being matters to her, because it’s tied to her own.
My fear and trepidation melt at the edges. Because whatever it is, whatever has found me here, it knows me. Maybe more than I know myself.
I turn to look for the source of the heat behind me, but there is nothing there. Just an empty room that is both familiar and totally new. The chairs seem farther apart than they were before. The piano is closer to the wall. I should have stayed still and obedient. I should have kept my eyes on the mirror. As the warmth is pulled away and replaced with bitter cold.
I turn back, but she’s gone. Whipping my head, I search desperately for my reflection. Some proof that I still exist in the space. But she has vanished, erased as though she had never been there at all. I am abandoned by my own image.
My chest aches, thrumming with a dull, painful longing. A hollow pressure blooms under my sternum, aching in a way that feels old and familiar.
I think of my mother. Not her face; I can’t recall the image of it anymore. Just the feeling of her. Her warmth. The way she used to hum while folding laundry, a tune with no melody, a wordless comfort shaped into sound. I remember how the rhythm would drift into the hallway, wrap around me like arms, and tell me I was safe without ever needing to say the words.
I want that comfort again.
I want it with a sharpness that makes my throat tighten and my eyes sting and my body tremble. I want to be held without being asked why. To be known without performance. To be loved without having to be beautiful, without needing to pose or impress or earn it.
To be loved without needing to give anything in return.
The yearning curls tighter in my chest, a desperate, aching knot. It pushes reason out of the way and nudges me toward any source of warmth, even the ones I know are wrong. Even the ones that leave me trapped behind the glass.
The mirror fogs faintly, though I’m not breathing on it. The air wavers, as if someone’s hand hovers just out of sight. I reach out with the desperation of a child drowning in a swimming pool, struggling toward a surface I can see but can’t reach, my feet rooted to the warping floorboards beneath me. The moment my fingertips of my outstretched hand cross the glass, a low hum blooms beneath my skin. It vibrates through my bones, deep and rhythmic. The purr of something ancient curls beneath the floor. My breath hitches. The warmth floods back, fuller this time, as if I’ve opened a door I hadn’t realized was closed.
Relief pours through me.
My knees soften. The ache in my chest quiets. My pulse slows, soothed by something I can’t see but can feel: the invisible arms of my mother wrapping around my shoulders and pulling me close. My fingers splay across the surface, and it no longer feels like glass. It has give, like the warm, velvety flesh of an animal's underbelly or the soft skin between the shoulder and neck where you press your face to forget the world.
And I do. For a moment, I forget everything. The company. The rules. The pressure. And drift aimlessly in an endless tranquil ocean. Something enormous turns far beneath me, and the current rocks me gently in its wake.
A noise catches in my throat, half sob and half sigh. I lean forward, my body surrendering itself because it feels so right. Because whoever—or whatever—waits behind the glass understands what I need better than I do.
The hum deepens, submerging me in sound that has dropped beneath hearing. It fills me up and settles where I imagine my soul rests. My skin buzzes with it. My reflection flickers back to life for a second, a stutter like a skipped frame. Her body reflects mine as we hold each other in an intimate embrace. Her eyes glitter like crushed glass caught in the light, the whites stretched thin and pink with irritation as they push against the edges of her sockets. Her bright American smile catches the lights as a thin thread of saliva slips from one corner of her mouth, catching on her chin before dropping.
Perfect, lovely, happy Hannah. An animal pleased with her catch. But I’m not scared; it’s my reflection.
Behind her—me—us, something shifts inside the wall.
Arms and legs and paws and hooves. Faces and muzzles and teeth, and appendages that I can’t recognize, that aren’t animal or human, press forward through the soft, breathing skin I thought was milky-pink painted plaster. The surface doesn’t crack but yields, rounding and undulating around limbs like latex. Paw pads leave soft ovals; hooves imprint half-moons; human nails drag long, thin lines that blanch white, then pink over again as the peach-fuzzed skin bounces back into place.
The tissue wall shifts, and I realize it isn’t a wall at all. It’s the bloated paunch of something gargantuan, adjusting itself to press a swollen, inflamed teat closer to me. Each protrusion from the stomach makes the gland swell and bead, warm milk spurting in short pulses, timed to the presses on the other side. The distended belly lurches, resisting the hard, panicked writhing inside it, as the mother’s meal tries to crawl out, away from inevitable digestion.
Eyes peek through the thin translucent membrane with every persistent push. Wildly searching the training room until they find me and sharpen. Mouths work without sound, lips shape muffled questions, and jaws open and snap shut in hunger. Teeth show, some human, some needle-fine, some flat and grinding, biting hard enough to imprint their ridges into the skin before slipping back.
The pressure pushes in silence: a tide thudding against the confines of my skin, my pulse thundering until I’m sure it can hear my heartbeat. I can’t tell if they’re reaching for my throat and my flesh or for whatever part of me has stepped forward and made itself vulnerable. All of it strains toward me in a frantic choreography.
But it doesn’t matter. Pleasurable waves roll through my body, reverberating through every cell. Mine—no, Hannah’s—no, our reflection, no longer mute, begins to chant what was once my name. We say it like a prayer, the syllables slipping out of rhythm: first too quick, then a beat behind, then layered in rounds as if more than one mouth is using our voice.
“Se-bin.”
Again.
“Se-bin.”
Each repetition is closer and surer, a lullaby caressing my ears. I nuzzle closer to the warmth in the glass, deeper into my mother’s arms. That’s right. Happy. Pretty. With Mom.
“Se-bin! Se-bin! Se-bin!”
We are screaming now.
My whole image fogs over from the other side of the glass; I can almost feel a hot, humid breath fan over me. I lean in. Just one more centimeter closer…
The pleasure ruptures into agony.
The warmth flashes into a white-hot sear, bringing something sharp beneath it. It stops holding me and starts driving into me. It punches through my skin, ramming itself into the places I’d softened and left unguarded: behind my knees, under my tongue, between my toes and fingers. It claws through muscle and grinds into my joints, seeping through my veins like acid.
Filling me.
Overfilling me.
Like it’s trying to wear me from the inside.
And I do nothing but let it.
Even as my spine splits in two. Even as my lungs collapse. Even as my eyes begin to bulge and the corners of the room fold in.
I let it because I can’t live without this comfort again.
I let it because I’m tired and broken and ugly and lost.
And Mom knows. Mom loves me anyway.
Mom begins pressing into my chest from the inside out, like a hand meticulously searching through me, checking every nerve and counting every cell. I can feel my bones and organs stretch to make room as she worms and wiggles upward, climbing the vertebrae of my spine like a ladder till she finds what she’s looking for.
A sharpness blooms at the base of my skull as teeth bear down on my brainstem. A shape, a thought, a new rhythm latches on and takes root. I try to blink, but my eyes have already closed. Or maybe they were never opened at all.
And like a dying star, I collapse inward.
I lurch forward in bed, heart racing, lungs clawing for air that refuses to come fast enough. My sheets are cold and damp with sweat, tangled in my legs and sticking to the curve of my back. My mouth is open, silently gasping like a fish on the deck of a boat.
The dorm room is dark, but not fully. The hallway light is on, seeping in through the bottom of the door. My bedside clock blinks 3:09 AM, its numbers too red, stinging my eyes. I press the heel of my palm to my sockets to try and ease the pressure expanding within my brain. My skin buzzes, electric and too tight, like my nerves are all facing the wrong direction, sending signals my brain can’t understand.
I can do nothing but hold still, waiting for the sensation to pass. But the wrongness doesn’t leave; it only seems to seep out of my skin into the air around me.
Scanning the room, everything remains still but the mirrors. They stand in the far corner, propped against the wall, one half-covered by a hoodie someone tossed over them. But I can see enough.
My reflection stands there, not taunting or beckoning, but no longer mirroring me either. It looks like me. It does what I do. But half a second too slowly. Its shoulders rise on a delay, pretending to breathe. Its mouth opens a blink too late, gasping for imaginary air.
A soft creak breaks our staring contest.
A mattress shifting and a breath sucked in fast.
Min-ji sits up, her silhouette barely visible in the low light, a trembling hand pressed to her mouth like she’s trying not to scream. Her eyes search the room, wide, glassy, and unfocused, as though she doesn’t recognize where she is.
A beat later, Ji-ah turns over in her bunk with a low groan and shoots upright, clawing at her chest like she’s surfaced from drowning.
Then Yuri. Then Mina.
Each girl stirs in staggered bursts, gasping and shuddering, eyes ablaze with the weight of something they can’t name. Not one of us speaks. Words feel impossible. Or maybe forbidden. Like saying it aloud would make it real.
Hannah is the last to rise. Her breath hitches before her body does, like her soul comes back before the rest of her. She sits up slow, with groggy eyes. Her movements delayed, still half-caught in whatever dream had wrapped around her. She looks around the room with hollow eyes. And then she looks at me.
There is something too knowing in her gaze. Maybe she’s seen more than the rest of us. Or maybe just remembered more.
The silence pulses, thick and heavy, stretching between all of us. The pit in my stomach screams at me to get up and move, to tear free of my bed, fly down the stairs and out of the building, and walk the three hundred and eighty kilometers home.
But the thrumming at the base of my skull reminds me that we have vocal lessons in three hours and choreography practice thirty minutes after that.
So I tug the damp sheet from around my ankles, pull it to my chin, lie back down, and close my eyes.
Down, down, up, down.
Down, down, up, down.
Down, down, up, down.
The pattern drills into my skull, over and over, until I can’t tell if the movement is mine or just something passing through me. We’ve been at this for over an hour, five bodies pumping in near-synch to recession pop that should be dead and buried but lives forever in training playlists. Every so often a lyric slips through and fires the correct sequence of neurons in my brain for me to comprehend what is being sung. Usually being the same generic phrase, like “party as if it’s your last night,” or a vague sexual innuendo that saturated early 2000s pop. Today, though, most of the words smear past me like sounds running through a blender.
I’m too focused on Miss America in my periphery, anyway.
I could list a dozen things she’s doing wrong: she’s off-beat, barely holding form, and very obviously struggling. In any other room I’d feel for her. But in this room, there are no mistakes and no accidents, only perfection. Lady Liberty auditioned with, I’m guessing, a surface-level grasp of that reality.
I picture her back in L.A., staring at her acceptance email like it was a ticket to heaven. Probably celebrated over matcha or boba, recording the moment on her Instagram stories while picturing her Rocky montage—the sweat, the pain, and the eventual payoff. Imagining she would be able to overcome the obstacles and debut as some perfectly imperfect version of herself. She probably believed she was special.
Now fast-forward: she drops out of high school, hugs her crying parents, takes a fifteen-hour flight to Seoul… all to wind up in this studio repeating the same beginner four-count for what feels like days. And maybe it has been days. Time seems to stretch in these studios, causing your internal clock to glitch until you’re anxious and completely reliant on management.
Although there is one thing she has right: she is gobsmackingly gorgeous. Athletically thin, with perfectly toned abs; long, golden-tanned legs; almost artistically sculpted facial features; and golden honey-blonde hair. I would think she's a natural blonde if not for the monolids.
Yes, Hannah is effortlessly beautiful, even as her hair is pasted to her face with sweat, tears, and spit; it happens when you’re gasping counts. Leaving it down was a mistake; strands stick in her armpits and tug painfully at her scalp when she drives her elbows. Her movements slow, then stutter. Her arms jerk as they resist her. She keeps pushing, though. We always do, right up until the body can no longer hold itself together.
When Hannah goes down, it’s sudden. Knees buckling, head snapping forward, before her whole body folds into a heap on the sweat-slick floor.
The music cuts mid-beat. Leaving the atmosphere stripped and raw. The only sound being made is exhausted panting. I feel embarrassed at how loud I’m breathing and try my best to inhale and exhale quietly through my nose.
But the lack of oxygen creeps up on me, and a wave of dizziness washes through me; my body rebels against my mind, and my chest heaves as I gasp deep and heavy breaths through my mouth. My head tilts toward the mirror my eyes are already locked onto, and I watch my reflection mock me.
Her body is a perfect replica of mine; she's slightly hunched over, hands gripping her hips, ponytail askew and littered with flyaways, shirt soaked with sweat, but as the stale cold air chafes my lungs, my mirrored image breathes low and steady. I blink hard, and my plain, obedient, expressionless reflection stares back.
I don’t look as wrecked and exhausted as Hannah, but I’m also not nearly as pretty, and after ten years of training, I should look better after a warm-up. The other girls are in similar shape, and so I will take that win.
A chair screeches across wood; the sound reverberates through the room. The Director stands and skates through a path cleared by the many trainers, assistants, and managers. Their faces are all locked in the same neutral, administrative expression they get when someone’s about to be coached. She glides toward Hannah. Who looks up, pleading, embarrassed, but not yet panicked. She hasn’t learned the scale of consequences here.
I feel bad for her. I really do. But mostly I feel relief. A sharp, ugly relief that settles deep in my bones trumps whatever pity and guilt I feel for Hannah. I know the others feel it too. At least it’s not me.
The thought is only temporarily soothing. Although the girls and I won’t receive the brunt of the punishment, we won’t be exempted from it either. Discipline here is never administered in a straight line.
“Listen closely. If one person is off-beat, if rhythm breaks, that is unacceptable. I expect everyone to be beyond that level. I have no use for anyone who cannot manage the bare minimum.”
The Director’s voice, cold and beautiful, settles over the room like snowfall on spring blossoms: gentle and with the finality of death. She used to be kinder, more nurturing and motherly, but as the clock ticks closer to our debut, whatever warmth she supplied to us has been replaced with the chilling no-nonsense personality of a general.
She turns towards us and inhales. “No solid food for a week.”
I keep my eyes on the floorboards between us but still feel the burn of her stare sizzle through me. The room is so quiet I can hear the HVAC tick.
I time it perfectly in my head: One, click. Two, click. Three, click. A pause. The machine rumbles to life, pumping frigid air through the vents and down my back.
She sweeps her gaze back to Hannah and gives her orders.
“Everything Se-bin does, you will do. When she eats, you will eat. When she sleeps, you will sleep. You will be exactly like her, understood?”
Hannah nods her head meekly.
My stomach drops, and my ears burn with quiet embarrassment.
Dread of the burden thrust onto me rushes through my chest, but tangled in it is something sharper and quieter: pride. Chosen. Seen as the perfect template. Something Hannah needs to emulate. Yes, Hannah is beautiful, but that is all she is.
The sweetness of the feeling lingers for a moment before curdling into something sour. Like biting into a fruit that has begun to rot.
I feel every pair of eyes flick to me, but I keep mine anchored on the floorboards. There’s a warped spot just ahead of my toes, bowed from years of use or pressure, or both.
The Director doesn’t look at me. She just turns and walks out, the click of her heels landing a little too sharply. The door closes behind her with that soft, compressed hiss, and it feels as if the air gets pulled out of the room with her.
No one moves.
Hannah’s still on the ground. Her pretty hazel eyes sparkle a little brighter as they well up with tears. She just sits there like her operating system shut down. I’m not sure she even heard the punishment.
“Five minutes,” one of the assistants says. Her voice is flat and uninterested. “Get water if you need it.”
It takes a second before anyone responds. Then we all move at once: one moment, stillness, and then motion, precise and synchronized, like a switch flipped on.
No one helps Hannah. That’s not how this works. She will never learn if coddled. I pass her on the way out, but she doesn’t look up. Her hand twitches slightly, maybe a reach, but probably nothing.
The hallway is dimmer than I thought it would be; management must have deemed it necessary to skip lunch and kept us in the studio longer than I realized. I fill a paper cup halfway and take one long sip, letting the cool water slide down my throat. I’m not thirsty. Just doing what's expected of me.
I catch my reflection in the water cooler’s stainless steel panel. I see my head tilt before I feel it move.
I blink, and it’s just me again. I toss the cup and turn back towards the studio.
Break’s over.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The tears come quietly, like rain slipping down a windowpane. He doesn’t wail or sob; they never do, not anymore. But she sees the trembling in his shoulders, the way his breath catches on the way out, and she knows.
She could not say what precisely has cracked in him tonight. It rarely matters. A misstep in rehearsal. A critique phrased too sharply. An echo of self-doubt that finally found a voice. At this age, thirteen, sometimes fourteen, they begin to feel the weight of becoming. And that weight is heavier than it looks.
She doesn’t ask what’s wrong. It would be like asking a newborn why it cries.
Instead, she lowers herself beside him, the way she always does. Not close enough to startle. But close enough to comfort.
“You’re alright,” she murmurs, each word soft and round. “Today was hard. Wasn’t it?”
She can almost see the words brush against his skin and tickle his ears. His chin quivers.
He doesn’t lift his head, but there’s a flicker of motion, the barest nod. His fingers clench at the hem of his hoodie. The company’s emblem rests just beneath his collarbone, woven into the fabric like a seal. He wears it like protection, even as it begins to fray and come apart at the seams.
He shakes again, the physical exertion of trying to gather everything he has spilled out and force it back into its bottle. Then stillness, his body stiff and unmoving like a stuffed mannequin. He’s trying now. That’s good. That means he is still willing to please.
It always happens around this age. Just as the body starts to stretch into itself, the mind softens. They reach for something, for someone, to tell them they’re still safe. That they are loved. That they are important and needed.
And who better to turn to than her?
At first, she is a teacher. Later, when they move into the dorm, she becomes a mother. In time, she will take on a final shape, often a tyrant, sometimes a friend, and sometimes, when necessary, a lover. Each role has its own purpose. Each version of her is a rung on the ladder that brings them closer to who and where they are meant to be.
Their parents gave them to the company and her long ago, though none of them realized it at the time. School during the day. Study academy at dusk. Training into the night. Home lost the warmth of love and life and grew cold, becoming little more than a stop for sustenance and sleep. By the time they moved into the dorms, the calls had stopped, and the distance had sunk in its claws.
All while their parents bragged about their exceptional children at pretentious fundraisers and galas.
“She hasn’t called in months. It shows how seriously she takes her training.”
“He’s thriving. Too busy to check in, of course, but that’s what success looks like.”
“You know how it is. Gifted children don’t have time for childish things.”
And so she filled the void they left. She learned the cadence of their footsteps. She marked their birthdays in her calendar. She was there for coughs, for contracts, and for breakdowns in the training room. She translated their futures into terms they could comprehend and yearn for.
They don’t call her “Mother.” Not outright. But the word curls off their tongues when fever fogs their minds and when exhaustion rests heavy over their bodies. She never corrects them.
Beside her, he wipes at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, dragging the salty tears away in one motion. His breath has evened. His spine has steadied.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he says, voice small and newly raw.
“You haven’t,” she replies, and the words glide over him like silk. “You’re doing beautifully. You’re on the cusp of something greater.”
She reaches up and smooths the hair from his forehead. Her other hand cups his hot, tear-stained cheek. His eyes flutter shut, and he leans into the touch.
Her eyes don’t miss the red flush that runs up his neck. She memorizes the way he gives in so easily, the way one touch softens him. It will be useful later.
“Moments like this mean you’re growing. You’re not breaking down. You’re breaking through.”
They always believe that line. Because it’s honest. They are changing. They are approaching something luminous. Something that will reshape them from the inside out.
He leans closer without asking, his body silently asking whether she’ll allow it. She welcomes him, arms wrapping tightly around his bony shoulders. Her fingers gently stroke the back of his neck. She feels him shiver against her.
“You’ll be okay. I am right by your side," she murmurs.
The words settle into him like a sedative.
At this moment, safety needs to have a shape, a voice, and a pair of hands. Eventually, he will come to understand that the comfort he receives from her is only a sliver of what this place can offer him. And while he learns it and drinks what is offered to him, the cord to home frays quietly, strand by strand, until there is no longer a tether at all.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The dorm is always cold.
Sixty-five degrees, precisely. The company made sure of that, bolting a lockbox over the thermostat so none of us could sneak the heat up. I think the constant chill keeps our bodies burning calories to stay warm. Efficient suffering.
That's because rule number one is "be skinny."
I know this because Hannah and I are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, slowly sipping our company-issued protein shakes. This is the third time this week we’ve eaten “dinner” together, and by now, a routine has been set. Before Hannah, one of the other girls, Mina or Yuri, would usually hang around after finishing their own meal to keep me company, a small kindness toward my slow-eating habit. But now that Hannah has to mimic everything I do, their company is no longer needed.
She mirrors me in every motion: the angle of the straw, the slow swallow, even the way I let my head dip when I’m tired of holding her gaze. It’s not her fault, but I can’t decide if it’s comforting or unbearable.
The shakes are chalky and vaguely vanilla-flavored, like someone tried to engineer “neutral” in a lab and failed. It leaves a sickly sweet, creamy film that coats your mouth and throat. I’ve stopped drinking them quickly. I just let the liquid sit in my mouth until it warms up enough to go down. If I think about it long enough, I can force the taste to morph into flavors I enjoy. A mango smoothie, fried chicken, my mom’s spicy seafood stew.
The last thought clings to my tongue. I can almost taste it: the briny broth, the steam curling against my face, the kind of savory warmth that only comes from hours of slow simmering. For a second, I almost feel full. I almost feel home. I swallow.
I haven’t spoken to my mother in months. And until I debut, I won’t.
It's both for our benefit. It keeps me from being homesick and her from worrying. The last time we spoke, she was worrying. Worrying if I was sleeping enough, worrying if I was eating enough, worrying if I was happy. When she said that, I scoffed. “Of course I’m happy. I’ve been working towards this forever.”
I tell myself I’m happy. I tell myself it’s worth it, and I still want it. The stage, the spotlight, the applause that feels like blood rushing into your ears. I want it so badly that some days I confuse wanting with breathing and breathing with happy.
But a low thrum persists in the pit of my stomach, quiet and steady: a twisting, uneasy dread. Each day seems to drop away before me like a platform with a false bottom, released by some unseen hand. And I have no choice but to leap toward the next landing before the ground gives way beneath my feet.
I used to mistake that constant motion for progress. I used to believe I was being shaped into something extraordinary. That all this pain was proof I was meant for something greater. That if I just kept going and pushed past the limit, my voice, my face, my body would finally transform into the right shape and earn meaning.
I used to talk my mother’s ear off about it. How I was going to be famous. How one day I’d look like I belonged on a stage instead of just in the audience. And like the good mother she was, she enrolled me in everything I asked for: vocal lessons, dance academies, stage camps with overnight stays and strict rules. She’d smooth my hair, adjust my posture, and smile like she could already see it. She wanted me to be happy and thought I had talent.
The company agreed with her. They said I was exceptional. Promising. They told my mother they’d cover the costs. Said with time and discipline and maybe some veneers, I could really “come into my own.” Said I was lucky.
Maybe I was. I tell myself I still am. Most days, I pretend that’s what all of this has been about, just reaching my potential.
But as the days drop away beneath my feet, effort and appearance seem to matter less and less. I’ve put in the work for ten years. I can dance until my toenails fall off and sing until my voice is reduced to a rasp. I can starve myself into whatever shape they demand and let them carve my face into something beautiful. None of it feels like enough. And the thrum in my stomach warns me that it's more than that.
The sound of our straws sucking the last bit of shake from the bottles snaps me out of my thoughts. I glance up at Hannah; her gem-like eyes shine expectantly at me, framed by her long wispy lashes like a picture, waiting for what I do next so she can follow exactly.
Her L.A. tan has almost faded. What’s left of it makes the dark circles under her eyes stand out. She’s been quieter these past few days, less of a sunbeam and more like the memory of one. But the memory is still frustratingly pretty.
I set my bottle down. She mirrors me.
“You get used to the taste,” I say, tapping my finger against the plastic. “Eventually.”
“I don’t think I want to,” she mutters.
I almost smile. It’s the first honest thing either of us has said all day.
“But it’s better than nothing.” She quickly adds, “Honestly, I’m so exhausted and hungry I could eat anything.”
“I don’t remember the last day I walked out of lessons not being exhausted.” I reply, fiddling with the packaging on the empty bottle.
“Right?!? The past few days, I’ve been so wiped I swear I’ve been seeing… things.” She says it with a half-laugh, like she’s hoping I’ll laugh with her. Hoping for acknowledgement.
I don’t. I just give a small nod, one that can mean anything or nothing.
I was eleven when I first moved into the dorms. Eager to make an impression, I went out of my way to befriend the older trainees and practically served myself to them on a silver platter. They hazed me for two weeks.
Most of it was harmless: extra chores, endless errand runs, side dishes stolen from my plate before I could eat them. But what they enjoyed most was telling me ghost stories.
“Did you know this building is haunted, Se-bin?”
They told me about a trainee who had been an ace in the making. She could sing and dance perfectly, and modeling agencies were offering her contracts before she had even debuted.
“There was talk of her going solo; that’s how good she was.”
The other members of her group grew jealous. They despised her, shut her out, and spread rumors that the company favored her because she was sleeping with the CEO and his investors.
“She couldn’t handle it,” the older girls whispered. “One night, she snuck out of the dorm and went into Training Room Nine. She slammed her head against the mirrors until they shattered. By the time she stopped, the floor was covered in glass, pieces of her skull, and brain matter.”
When the staff found her the next morning, they said there was almost nothing left of her head.
“Now she watches from the mirrors in Training Room Nine. And if you’re ever alone with her after dark and see her, she’ll kill you by killing your reflection.”
The story left me paranoid for weeks, especially after dark. I brushed my teeth with my back to the bathroom mirror and changed clothes beneath the blankets, convincing myself that as long as I avoided my reflection, I could avoid the vengeful Gwisin.
Eventually, I learned to laugh about it. That was the point of the story, after all. The older girls wanted to watch me flinch whenever I caught my reflection. They wanted me to hesitate before entering an empty studio. Once they grew bored, they admitted that no trainee had died in Training Room Nine. According to them, there wasn’t even a Training Room Nine.
Just a story made to frighten an eleven-year-old.
But there’s a reason ghost stories linger long after you stop believing them. Somewhere in the back of your mind, tucked away and gathering dust, are memories that never quite fit: moments that broke the established rules of the world, too peculiar and unnatural for your brain to throw away while you slept.
This morning, during warmups, I looked up at the wall of mirrors and couldn’t find my reflection at first. I know I was there; I was facing it, feet in the right place, arms lifted like always, but it took a second too long to register my own face. My body moved faster than I remembered.
And last week, I watched Min-ji adjust her ponytail in the mirror, only to realize a second later she hadn’t moved at all. Her body right next to me was still, completely still. Only the mirror shifted.
I told myself it was fatigue. Or maybe just the angle. Isn’t that how the mind works when it’s exhausted? Things blur, details slip, reflections lag. We don’t get as much sleep as we should, we don’t eat as much as we should, and we do pretty much the same thing every day. Considering where I am, it would be more odd if I didn’t see things. So therefore, there’s nothing wrong. This system doesn’t allow for wrong.
I glance at Hannah. Her face reveals every thought that passes behind those glittering eyes. She wants me to agree with her, or maybe to reassure her. But I’ve been having a hard time even reassuring myself.
So instead, I tell her the best thing to do when you're tired: “All we need is a good night’s sleep.”
It comes out flat and useless. A phrase I’ve heard staff say a dozen times.
She nods like it means something. Maybe it does, to her.
But as we walk toward the hallway, my limbs already heavy with the thought of tomorrow's late-night conditioning, I know the truth: whatever’s wrong isn’t from lack of sleep.