Sodam closes the Katalk tab from her browser. Youngsook is still typing but Sodam doesn’t feel like having the conversation anymore. When the first notification popped up, she made the decision to spend her break chatting with her former group members but if her time perception is right, now seems like the right time to continue her work.

The screen switches to the next open tab, a seeder torrent. After downloading a video game last night, Sodam kept her browser open so that others could use her bandwidth. She continues to do so now as she searches for the right brush in order to get back to work.

The work room of her apartment was once a living room. She saw no reason for keeping the biggest space she has available for guests and relaxation, so she promptly transformed it into something more useful. Any guests could sit at her workbench and if she wanted to relax, Sodam could simply draw herself a bath in the tub.

Now the former living room has storage racks on each of its walls. Most are stuffed with fabric and doll parts, here and there a painting or sewing set is peaking out. In front of her is the aforementioned workbench with her laptop, a doll head and some tools and in one of the corners she had placed her 3D-printer, the source of the majority of doll parts in her room. Techno is blasting from the speakers, loud enough to drown out the soft noises of her overheating laptop. The evening sun paints the room into a golden light.

Sodam finds the brush in a pen holder on the second rack left of her. She turns back to the bench, on which the doll's head is attached to a tripod. Sodam bows down until her nose is almost touching the face and sniffs. The paint smells dry. She backs up a little and inspects it closer. It is of a pale creamy color, with rosy cheeks and fuchsia lips. The color is matte as well, it possesses none of that shiny aspect of wet paint. As it should. She was right, now is the perfect time to continue.

Carefully she adjusts the tripods’ angulation until the eyelids close halfway. She uses a special mechanism to have them mobile, open in supine and closed in horizontal position. Sodam strives to make her dolls as good as she can. This includes mobile eyelids and joints, expensive fabrics and intricate hair pieces. It is probably the reason her business is doing so well even though she only started out a year ago. She has a month-long waiting list for commissions and her own designs are popular as well even though none of her customers know that she is a former idol. She knows that she could raise the prices if she reveals her identity but Sodam has no desire to do that.

A quick movement of her fingers opens a drawer underneath the desk and she takes out her hot glue pistol. She checks that the smallest tip is mounted before making a fine line right at the edge of the left eyelid. The pistol is put down and her hand grasps for a tweezer. With infinite precision she lifts the thin lashes which lie besides the tripod and glues them to the eyelid. The excess glue is removed with the help of the fine brush she just found.

Just as she starts to repeat the same procedure for the right lid, she hears the faint noise of the front door opening. “I’m home, Mimi!” Hanoong’s voice could be barely heard under the booming bass of the techno song. Sodam doesn’t answer. She focuses on the task ahead and picks up the other lash with her tweezers. She hears the door to her work room open but doesn’t make a sign of acknowledgement until the second lash is firmly fixed on the other eyelid. Then she puts her utensils down and turns off the music. The whirring of her laptop is now an unpleasant backdrop noise and she shuts it close and stops the seeding process, unwilling to deal with the noise pollution. Once Sodam is satisfied with her environment, she turns around and looks at her boyfriend. Hanoong is already watching her. His light brown hair is still carefully tousled, the way his stylist had arranged it for the recording and he smells like hairspray and exhaustion.

“What’s the best part of your day so far?” she asks him and he smiles. His eyes do that crinkly thing that indicates he’s charmed by her and Sodam files it away in her mind. He languidly comes closer until he’s right in front of her and leans closer for his answer. Sodam used to be the tallest member of her former girlgroup but Hanoong towers over her. “I think that would be you.”

Sodam goes on her tippy toes to give him a peck. Hanoongs eyes crinkle even more and the lights reflected in them seem especially bright. He breaks eye contact first and his gaze falls to the head on the table. “Is this another commission?”
 

“Yes, it is a birthday present for a twelve year old girl. I’m creating a doll based on one of her paintings. Yesterday I finished the design. I started printing and painting the body parts today. The iris was done with eleven different shades ranging from yellow to cyan. I used another nine for skin and details.” Hanoong steps closer to the desk and inspects the face. “It looks good.”
“It does.”
 
Suddenly the faint smell of warm food and soy sauce catches her attention. She looks at her boyfriend, or more exactly, at the brown paper bag in one of his hands.“You got takeaway.”
“I dropped by a Chinese place on my way home.” He turns back to her and raises the hand carrying the food. “Rice or noodles?”
 
Sodam used to not have a preference. She enjoyed both dishes about the same in terms of taste, consistency and smell. But Youngsook's nickname for Hanoong is noodle and at some point Sodam started associating the food with her boyfriend. Slowly she found herself ordering more pasta until she realized that this silly nickname made her biased towards the flour dish. Now the choice was not so tough. “I take the noodles.”

 -

They start eating in silence. Sodam arranges her food on the plate. She counts thirteen mushrooms in her stir-fried noodles so she has to give one of them to Hanoong who accepts it with a nod. There are nine little chunks of meat, so that is okay. While picking up the food with her chopsticks, Sodam remembers the earlier conversation in the chat. “Youngsook says her kitchen is painted in intelligent gray.”
 
“You spoke with Sushi today?” Hanoong also has a food-based nickname for his best friend.

“Yes. We talked in the group chat. It was only a few minutes before you arrived. She still watches your drama. She thinks the hair color suits you.”

Hanoong puts his chopsticks down. Sodam looks up at his face because he doesn’t usually do that before he finishes a meal. His face has a slight frown when he says the next words, “So you’ve heard the news around Somang?”
 
“The fact that she released the prologue of a book? Yes, Nabi sent the link to an article.” Sodam keeps eating.
 
“How do you feel about that?” he asks. Sodam pauses. She casts her eyes down and tries to identify any particular emotion associated with those news. She chews and swallows the food in and really contemplates it. There are none. It doesn’t feel like a good or a bad thing, it just is another fact about one of her former girl group members. Like Youngsooks walls or Erie’s gemstone earrings. “I’m feeling neutral. Somang can do whatever she wants.”

“Hmm” hums Hanoong. He picks up his chopsticks again but only pokes at his food without taking another bite. Maybe he isn’t hungry anymore. Sodam's focus goes back to her own plate. Then Hanoong speaks up again. “I don’t like it. I think Somang will try to stir things up that have long settled.”

“Perhaps Somang isn’t happy with the way they settled.”

“Perhaps that is true. But bringing up your shared past won’t help her either. We all have moved on from that chapter so I don’t see any reason to rock the boat.” His eyebrows furrow a little more as he looks down at the chicken fried rice container in front of him.

“She has a right to talk about her truth.”

“That is true. I just don’t think that her version will be particularly favorable for the rest of you” Hanoong retorts. He's looking at her now.

“The currently most accepted version is not favorable to everyone involved, either.” Hanoong doesn’t reply to that. Now Sodam is the one putting down her chopsticks. Her palms are itching for some reason and she rubs them against the fabric of her dress. They don’t seem to become less itchy but now her food is getting cold.

So she picks up the chopsticks again and continues eating. For a while everything is silent. Sodam finishes her dish while Hanoong only picks at the chicken bits. After a while he clears his throat. “I admire how principled you are, you know? I know I view this situation from a selfish perspective because I care about you girls and I don’t want you to be caught up in gossip. You chose to leave the Entertainment industry and I don’t like the idea of her dragging you back into the spotlight. I don’t know Somang as well as you do and maybe I’m misjudging her intentions but I can’t help but be wary about her actions. But I’m not trying to tell you that you’re wrong or that she doesn't have a right to speak out.”

“It’s alright”, she answers, “I love you.” Hanoong smiles all sparkly-eyed again, “I love you too.” He grabs her empty dishes and puts them in the trash before placing his own leftovers into the fridge. Sodam doesn’t even need to ask him if he stays over for tonight, she knows from the way he moves that he will. She stands up too and starts to get ready to retreat for the night. It takes her two minutes and the thoughts about Somang’s book leave her mind, replaced with musings which movie they were going to watch and if her new heart-pattern pajama finished drying yet.