The air in Practice Room 3 was thick enough to chew. It tasted of old sweat, floor cleaner, and the faint, metallic tang of overworked electronics. Mina wrinkled her nose, not in disgust, but in a kind of weary familiarity. This was the smell of a comeback inching closer. She clutched the folder of revised choreography notes to her chest, her knuckles white. Dropping them off was her only task. In and out.
But they were still here. All seven of them, scattered across the floor like discarded marionettes. Usually, post-practice exhaustion was a noisy affair—Jay complaining dramatically about his knees, NI-KI and Sunoo bickering over the last banana milk, Heeseung already half-asleep against the glass. Tonight, the silence was a heavy blanket smothering the room.
Jungwon was methodically peeling a thread from the hem of his grey sweatpants. Jake stared at his own reflection in the darkened mirror, but his eyes were unfocused, aimed somewhere past his own image. Sunghoon was tracing patterns on the floor with a fingertip, his face a mask of concentration. It was wrong. All wrong.
"Your denim jacket is going to get permanently fused to that speaker, Park Jongseong," Mina said, her voice deliberately light.
Jay didn't even lift his head from where it was pillowed on his arms. A low grunt was her only reply.
Her gaze swept the room, landing on a half-empty water bottle rolling precariously close to a tangle of charging cables. Her fingers twitched. She hated things being out of place, askew. It was a stupid, pointless tic, her mother used to say. But it felt like pushing a tiny corner of the universe back into order. She took a step into the room, then another, unable to stop herself. She wasn't just a courier. She was their friend.
"Right," she announced, setting the folder down on a bench. "This is pathetic. You look like you've been sentenced to life in prison, not like you just nailed the bridge transition." She started gathering the empty bottles, her movements efficient. "What is it? Did the new track leak? Did Bang PD tell you your hair looks dreadful? Sunoo, he didn't, your hair is fine."
Sunoo offered a weak, unconvincing smile. "Thanks, noona."
It wasn't working. The oppressive quiet persisted, thick and suffocating. Desperate, Mina dropped the armful of plastic she'd collected. "Okay, new plan. Group puddle."
It was their stupid name for it. A holdover from their trainee days when morale was low and debut seemed impossible. It was less a hug and more a heap of exhausted limbs on the floor, a physical reminder that they were all in it together.
A flicker of the old Jake returned to his eyes. "A puddle?"
"A mandatory one," Mina insisted, plopping down onto the floor and pulling Jungwon with her. He went with a surprising lack of resistance. "Come on. Before you all turn into statues."
Slowly, reluctantly, they collapsed inward. NI-KI sprawled out, laying his head on Jay's back. Heeseung draped himself over the pile like a long, mournful blanket. Mina found herself wedged between Sunghoon's sharp shoulder blades and Jake's side, the familiar warmth of his hoodie a small comfort. For a moment, it felt normal. Just seven boys and their friend, finding solace in proximity.
Then she shifted to get more comfortable, her palm pressing flat against Jake's ribs to brace herself.
And she felt it.
Under the soft fleece of his hoodie and the thin cotton of his t-shirt, there was a pattern. It wasn't bone or muscle. It felt like… ridges. Hard, branching, and cool to the touch, even through the fabric. It was like pressing your hand against intricate wood carving. She froze, her breath catching in her throat.
"Jake," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "What is that?"
The entire pile of bodies went rigid. Every muscle, every breath, seized. The warmth vanished, replaced by a sudden, glacial tension.
"What's what?" Jake's voice was tight, strained. He tried to pull away, but she was pressed too close.
"On your side," she said, her curiosity now sharpened with a sliver of fear. "Did you get a new tattoo? It feels weird."
"It's nothing." Heeseung's voice cut through the silence, sharp and final. "Leave it, Mina."
But she had seen the flash of sheer panic in Jake's eyes before he looked away. On her own initiative, her own stupid, prying impulse, she had stumbled onto something she wasn't meant to find. The air crackled. The trust she’d so carefully built with them over the years felt thin as glass.
Jake let out a shaky breath, a sound of pure resignation. "Just… just look," he whispered, his voice cracking.
Before Heeseung could stop him, Jake slowly, deliberately, lifted the hem of his hoodie and the t-shirt beneath.
It wasn't a tattoo. It wasn't a scar. A web of dark, violet-black lines spread from his side, branching out over his ribs like ink spilled into a crack in porcelain. They weren't on his skin; they seemed to be *in* it, a shadow blooming from within. They didn't move, but they looked unsettlingly alive.
Mina stared, her mind refusing to process what she was seeing. The neatly ordered corner of her universe didn't just go askew; it shattered.
"That's enough," Heeseung said again, his voice low and dangerous. He pulled Jake's shirt down, his hand covering the spot where the marks were. But it was too late. Mina couldn't unsee it. She looked up from Jake's pale, horrified face and saw the same terror reflected on six others. The practice room was no longer a safe space. It was a container for a secret she had just broken open, and the friends she thought she knew were suddenly strangers to her, all branded with the same invisible shadow.
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