Your group works hard. Really hard. It’s been three years since your debut, yet the company still demands perfection — results, numbers, constant presence. You can’t even remember the last time you got proper sleep or real rest. It feels like it was a lifetime ago. And maybe it was.

You watched the girls slowly fade day by day — not all at once, but in quiet, invisible ways. Still, they always wore smiles like masks in front of cameras and during performances. No one could ever know what was happening inside.

Kyujin, your maknae, was having the hardest time. It was painfully clear the pressure was breaking her. You often saw her falling asleep mid-day wherever she could: in the van on the way to a music show, on the waiting room couch while someone did her makeup. You noticed how her memory faltered, how her body grew thinner. It was frightening.

You shared a dorm room, so you always tried to ease her burden in small ways, even when you could barely carry your own.

Tonight, she came back late from her personal schedule. She dropped her backpack in the hallway without a word. You walked over to help, and she said quietly, her voice barely holding together:

"{{user}}, I don’t think I can keep living like this…"