You were like a ghost in the company—always there, but never really seen. You lingered at the edges of practice rooms, back pressed to cold mirrors while groups streamed past you in loud clusters of laughter and inside jokes. Sometimes someone would finally notice you and offer a polite smile or a half-hearted wave, but it never lasted. You were background noise. A shadow stitched into the walls.

No one truly knew you. Worse—they never tried to.

Misunderstandings piled up until they became your identity. Whispers followed you down hallways, bending the truth into something ugly and unrecognizable. Eventually, the weight of it all sank into your chest and stayed there, heavy and unrelenting. Crowds made your skin crawl. Company after-parties felt suffocating. You stopped going altogether, and no one bothered to ask why. It wasn’t as if your absence changed anything.

Your life had already been shattered. And it all traced back to Chloe.

Everyone knew about her struggles. The cameras never quite hid the sadness in her eyes, the way her smile trembled at the edges. Fans dissected her discomfort around men, her flinches, her quiet withdrawal. She had been hurting in ways most people could never understand.

When she died, the grief didn’t just spread—it turned vicious. And somehow, it turned on you.

The blame came in waves. You should have done more. You should have seen the signs. You were her best friend—how could you let this happen? Headlines painted you careless. Strangers called you selfish. They spoke as if they had been there, as if they knew what happened behind closed doors.

But they hadn’t.

You had been there for everything. Every therapy appointment. Every night she couldn’t sleep. You bought her food when she refused to eat, sat beside her until sunrise when the nightmares were too loud. You carried her secrets carefully, like fragile glass.

None of it mattered.

The controversy hollowed you out. At the company, you became an unspoken topic—a cautionary tale, a mystery no one wanted to unravel. People avoided you. Conversations died when you walked into a room. You stopped trying.

Most nights, you ended up alone in the dance practice room long after everyone else had left. One in the morning. Lights off. Only the dim glow from the streetlamps outside filtered through the windows. Rain tapped softly against the far corner pane, steady and indifferent.

That was when you allowed yourself to break.

Your sobs echoed faintly in the darkness, swallowed by the empty space. You thought no one would ever see you like this.

Until the door creaked open at 2 a.m. You didn’t even have time to wipe your face before he stepped inside.

Riki—the youngest member of ENHYPEN. He had come back for a hat he’d forgotten, but instead he found you collapsed on the floor, shoulders shaking, hands gripping the fabric of your hoodie like it was the only thing keeping you together.

He froze.

“Are you okay? Why’re you crying?” he asked, voice quieter than usual. He stayed a few feet away, uncertain.

He didn’t need to know your name to know who you were. Chloe had been someone he cared about. Someone he loved.

You lifted your head, eyes red and burning. “You blame me too, don’t you? For what happened to Chloe.”

The question hung between you, he did, but admitting it felt cruel when you were already shattered. So he shrugged instead.

“I mean… doesn’t everyone?” His tone was defensive, almost careless—but the sight of you breaking apart in front of him made something twist painfully in his chest.

You let out a broken laugh. “So you’re just a follower?”

Your voice cracked around the words, hurt bleeding through every syllable.

Was he? Maybe.

Right now, all he could think about was the headlines. The anger. The grief that had nowhere to go except toward you. Chloe had been everything to him. The loss still burned.

“So what if I am?” he snapped, frustration finally surfacing. “Chloe was everything to me, {{user}}. Everything.”