Chapter Text
Manon wasn’t exactly a fanatic for superheroes. She didn’t grow up with comic books tucked beneath her pillow or action figures lining her shelves. Superpowers, to her, belonged to the world of movies and childhood, in the same category as magic tricks and invisible friends. They’re charming, maybe, but they’re not real. They were stories told in flashes of color, in red capes and blue tights, in half-baked science and overly serious origin speeches. She thought about Spider-Man sometimes, or that weird alien on the silver surfboard, but only in the same way you think about cartoons from your childhood. That sort of thing didn’t exist in real life. It certainly didn’t exist in hers.
But lately, well. Lately, one name has started appearing over and over again. Not just in whispers or Twitter trends, but in actual news reports. Emergency broadcasts. Shaky camera footage taken by stunned bystanders. Sometimes she was in Los Angeles. Sometimes in Tokyo. Sometimes in Madrid or Manila or New York. A blue streak across the sky, a red blur passing too quickly for the naked eye to follow. She moved like light itself. And always, she arrived just in time. They called her Superwoman.
And the cape was stupid. It was so stupid. The whole thing was ridiculous, really. The suit was too tight, too bright. The boots were an impractical shade of red. The whole look screamed overdesigned comic book reject. And yet… she looked kind of like Sophia.
That was the worst part.
Not in every picture. Sometimes the resemblance wasn’t there at all because of different lighting, different angles, different ways she held her body. But sometimes it was enough. Enough to make something twist quietly in Manon’s chest. Enough to catch her mid-laugh, mid-bite, mid-sentence and make her stare a little too long at the TV screen in the living room. She’d blink, and it would be gone. Superwoman would fly off, and Sophia would walk in a second later in oversized glasses and fuzzy slippers, asking if anyone had eaten the last bag of shrimp chips.
It didn’t help that Sophia owned approximately fifteen pairs of prescription eyeglasses. Real ones, by the way, Manon checked. She wore them constantly. In rehearsals. In airports. At breakfast. The only time she ever took them off was for red carpets, promotions, photoshoots, and performances, when the stylists made her. It became a running joke among the girls, especially after a particularly dramatic Superwoman appearance in Seoul had gone viral. Dani insisted Sophia looked nothing like her and Yoonchae and Lara chimed in with exaggerated nods. “Different vibe entirely,” Lara said. “Sophia’s like… squishy. Superwoman is like… punk rock.” Megan was gentler, didn’t say much, but occasionally sent Manon a look that suggested maybe she understood the fixation. Maybe she didn’t think it was so crazy.
Still, Manon learned to keep it mostly to herself. Because they hadn’t been there. They didn’t see what she saw. They didn’t know what it felt like to fall.
It had happened so fast, one second she was leaning against the balcony railing at HYBE HQ, scrolling through texts, trying to breathe through the end-of-day fatigue, and the next, the metal beneath her hands creaked, and suddenly it gave way. And then she was falling.
Heart slamming into her ribs. Stomach lurching up to her throat. The sky spinning wildly as gravity pulled her down. For a terrifying second, she didn’t even scream. She just thought. She thought about how the news would phrase it. KATSEYE’s Manon Bannerman dies in balcony fall. She thought about Twitter. About how half the people would call it suicide while the other half would mourn with grainy fancams and dramatic edits. She thought about her parents and whether they’d blame the company. About her members, whether they’d be shocked or if they’d disband for her. She wondered if Sophie would actually make good on her dumb promise to create a Kahoot! game for her funeral. The winner gets half her stuff, by the way.
And then arms. Strong arms. They caught her like she weighed nothing. Like it was easy. There was a rush of wind and the familiar sting of cold air, and then her body collided with something solid and warm. She didn’t register what was happening at first, not until the velocity stopped and she realized she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even hurt. She was being held. Suspended. And then came the laugh. Soft and amused, definitely not cruel, not arrogant, but just oddly casual, as if her dramatic near-death experience was mildly inconvenient.
Manon blinked hard, breath caught in her chest, and found herself nose-to-nose with Superwoman. Close up, she was unreal. Beautiful, yes, but not in a model-on-a-magazine way. There was something otherworldly in her face, in the way her eyes scanned for danger even while holding Manon like a cradle. And she looked, God, she looked like Sophia. Not entirely. Not exactly. But enough. Enough that Manon couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stare.
“I—I…” she started, voice cracking, but the words never came. Her brain was too busy short-circuiting. Superwoman didn’t answer. She just smiled and slowly descended, her boots brushing against the balcony floor like a feather. She set Manon down gently, her hand steady at the small of her back. Then she turned to the broken railing. Her eyes flared bright red, a laser beam cutting clean across the snapped metal, bending it back into shape with impossible precision.
Manon watched in stunned silence, taking an unconscious step back. The sound alone was horrifying, the steel groaning, hissing, reforming under pressure. Superwoman turned to her again, slow and careful, like one wrong move might send her running.
“You don’t have to say anything. I understand you’re scared,” she said, and the voice was lower, or different, but it still held something warm in its undercurrent. Something… familiar. “You nearly just died.”
Manon didn’t answer. Her pulse hadn’t settled. Superwoman stepped closer and offered her a hand. “But you’re safe now, okay?” she said, nodding toward the newly fixed railing. “Try to stay away from faulty balconies.”
And Manon just stood there, staring at her, the echo of her voice circling in her head. Because that warmth, that cadence, the softness at the end of her consonants… She knew it. Not from headlines. Not from internet clips. But from quiet nights backstage. From early mornings when no one else was awake. From shared leftovers at 2 a.m. and whispered jokes in rehearsal spaces.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t.
Because Sophia was there when Manon returned to the room. Like she always was. Sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed in a tangle of oversized sweats, her black-rimmed glasses sliding slightly down her nose, a bag of shrimp crackers balanced precariously on her lap. Her phone was in one hand, muted screen casting a glow on her cheek, and when she looked up, her brows furrowed, not dramatically, not alarmed, just that soft crease she got when she was genuinely concerned.
“Hey,” she said, patting the spot beside her. “You okay?” And Manon could only nod. Because there it was again, that voice. The warmth in it. The cadence. The familiarity that was so specific and intimate, like a favorite song playing faintly from another room. She sat down in silence, not trusting her mouth to work the way it was supposed to, and Sophia didn’t press. She never did.
After that, something in her shifted. She didn’t call it obsession, not really. It was more like research. Just a need to know. A need to understand. Manon spent every free moment deep in the internet’s rabbit holes, flipping through side-by-side comparisons of Superwoman and Sophia, watching slowed-down clips of the hero flying over cities and squinting at the curve of her jaw. She followed every theory, every blurry paparazzi photo, every fan conspiracy thread. Once, at a fan sign, someone casually said Sophia looked like Superwoman and all the girls laughed, but Manon didn’t. She felt vindicated.
Still, life didn’t stop just because she was spiraling. They were global pop stars, after all. Interviews to attend. Choreography to perfect. Sleepless flights to catch. Which is how they ended up in Chicago, high off the adrenaline of their first Lollapalooza performance, climbing the velvet steps of a private club Olivia Rodrigo had rented out for the night. The air buzzed with bass and perfume and neon heat. Everyone was beautiful and tired and wildly alive.
Apparently, Olivia had reached out because Sophia was Filipino, too, because of course she would be connected like that. Of course everyone loved Sophia. Of course everyone wanted her around.
Inside, the music roared and the energy cracked. They passed shots between their hands like secrets. Lara got pulled onstage to DJ, Yoonchae danced on a table, Dani sang along to every lyric like she’d written them herself. Manon stayed close, half-laughing, half-sipping her drink and looking for something, or in her case someone.
And then she noticed.
Sophia was gone.
Not fully, not dramatically, she just slipped away. Half a shadow beneath the strobe lights, tucked into a corner where the bass wasn’t quite as loud and the crowd didn’t push so hard. Manon caught a glimpse of her leaning against a velvet wall, a drink in her hand, eyes closed like she was trying to find gravity again. Because the thing is: Manon was right.
Sophia is Superwoman. But no one could prove it, not even Manon. Because the suit she wore wasn’t just fabric and thread. It was laced with enchantment, woven from something alien and strange and sacred. It distorted how people saw her, just enough. Skewed the truth like a dream you couldn’t fully recall. The glamour made her look like someone else, someone taller, broader, sharper, unfamiliar. Different.
It had saved her more than once. She didn’t know how the powers came. One day, she was a teenage girl in Manila struggling to open a jar of peanut butter, and the next, she was snapping a doorknob clean off its hinges because she didn’t know her own strength. There wasn’t a crash or a comet or a spider bite. Just a slow, quiet awakening. Something already inside her that was blooming too fast. Hiding it during the whole Dream Academy process was harsh, but she managed.
There were perks, of course. She could fly. She could cross oceans in the time it took to microwave rice. She could eat sinigang with her mom — who knew about her powers — at noon, kiss her little cousins on the cheek, then fly back to Los Angeles for rehearsal by evening and no one would blink twice. She could save people. Really save them. Lift cars. Deflect bullets. Reverse floods.
But there were downsides too. One of them was that she couldn’t get drunk. Not with normal alcohol. Her body metabolized everything too quickly. It was annoying. Sometimes, like tonight, it felt cruel. She wanted to float in the haze like everyone else. She wanted her thoughts to quiet. She wanted to stop being so aware. So she made do.
She had, hidden in her clutch, a tiny silver vial. Forged somewhere in orbit, the elixir shimmered faintly when the light hit it. It wasn’t dangerous, not really. Just potent enough to make her feel something. To blur the edges. Sophia poured a few drops into her cup with a flick of her wrist, so practiced she didn’t even look.
“You deserve this,” she whispered to herself. Because she did. She had flown home last night and carried children through floodwater with her bare hands. She had returned in time for soundcheck. She had smiled through interviews, belted her final note on the Lolla stage with wind still tangled in her hair. One night. That’s all she wanted. “Just one day,” she said, softly, and raised her cup to her lips.
The chest panel of the suit stayed under her clothes, always. The S was the heart of everything. It wasn’t just a logo. It was the magic, the mask, the thing that warped perception and veiled her identity. Without it, someone might look too closely and might see her for who she really was. KATSEYE’s Sophia, pop-star by day, Superwoman by night. That just sounded absurd.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t worried. The drink was already kicking in. Three sips in, and the hum began behind her ribs, soft and dizzying. The more she drank, the more her body let go. Her powers, too, flickering away like static. She could no longer hear the overlapping voices from the other end of the club. She couldn’t feel the weight of the rooftop three blocks over. She couldn’t float anymore. She was grounded. Just another human.
And it felt kind of… nice. She danced without rhythm, shoulders swaying as someone — her memory tells her it was Conan — whispered something into her ear that made her throw her head back and howl. Somewhere nearby, someone said Sabrina Carpenter was around, and Sophia blinked, dazed and breathless and full of laughter. Wow, she thought. I’m a pop star.
Manon, meanwhile, was over by the snack table with Dani, trying, and failing to talk Megan out of stealing an entire bowl of chocolate almonds. “I swear I’ll find a ziplock or something,” Megan whispered conspiratorially, and Dani just looked at her like she was insane, “You are a grown adult.”
“And?” Eventually, Yoonchae was deputized to handle it, because if anyone could boss Megan around with a smile, it was her. While the two bicker about the ziploc bag that was already in the Chinese girl’s pockets, Dani nudges Manon, who at this time, is also a little inebriated by the alcohol, “Look at Soph.”
And there she was. Sophia Laforteza, laughing so hard at something Lara had said she had to hold onto the girl. Her legs wobbled when she moved, her head tilted like she was listening to stars sing instead of the club mix pounding through the air. It was… weird. Not bad, just unfamiliar. Sophia didn’t get drunk. At least, not like this. Not unless she brought that weird silver tumbler she sometimes sipped from during hotel room hangouts. The one no one else was allowed to taste. “Right,” Manon said quietly. She’s still buzzed, the walls feel like they’re warping, but she’s sober enough to pass the responsibility of looking after the other members to Daniela, “I should probably take her back to the hotel.”
Dani made a sympathetic sound, already rounding back to Megan with the stolen almonds. “Good luck wrangling her,” she smirked.
Sophia had wandered back to the bar, elbow perched, head drooping slightly, like she’d gone from pop star to sleepy toddler in ten minutes flat. Her drink still clung to the rim of her glass, untouched since she’d stopped dancing. Manon approached, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. She was so focused on her that she didn’t even realize there were other people at the bar, “Alright, party girl,” she murmured, voice close to her ear, “time to go.”
Sophia turned slowly, eyes wide and glassy behind her glasses because she’d insisted on wearing the black-rimmed ones tonight, claiming they made her look serious and pouted. A genuine pout. “But Manon,” she whined. Before Manon could respond, the host of the party herself, the Olivia Rodrigo leaned into their space. Apparently, they’d been talking. “Oh! Oh shit, hi,” Manon greeted, fumbling for words, suddenly sobering up, “Great party.”
Olivia smiled, amused and sweet. “You should probably take your girlfriend home.”
And the thing is, Manon heard her correctly, she really did. But she thought she was just drunk and that she may have misheard, so she blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I mean, you’re all she’s been talking about,” Olivia said, laughing lightly. “I could only assume…” Manon felt her stomach twist, not uncomfortably, but with something like static. Something excited and terrified at once. Sophia, meanwhile, looked far too pleased to be clinging to her, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. So Manon smiled. Forced at first, then softening as she cupped Sophia’s face. “No, you’re right,” she played along, voice warm and teasing. “This one... oh, you.” Sophia giggled. “Come on, love, let’s go.”
Getting her off the bar stool was a battle. Sophia, for all her slender frame, was deceptively heavy, dense in a way that suggested muscle and hidden strength. Manon had to wrap both arms around her waist and grunt softly as she pulled her to her feet. Several partygoers watched with amused expressions. Eventually, Lara, always attuned, always helpful, appeared at her side and wordlessly helped balance Sophia as they made their way out to the company car.
“She’s rooming with Megan tonight, right?” Manon asked, adjusting Sophia’s arm across her shoulders. “Yeah,” Lara replied, brushing sweat off her brow. “Are you sure you can handle her?”
Manon nodded, glancing at the girl now swiping lazily through her phone like nothing had happened. “She’s sobering up. See? I’ll call you if she throws up because I will not be cleaning that.”
“You joke,” Lara said, shaking her head. “Stay safe.”
And suddenly, Manon found herself in the backseat beside Sophia, limbs pressed against leather and the low thrum of post-party exhaustion making everything feel a little slower, a little more dreamlike. The car hummed along the streets of downtown Chicago, weaving past blinking stoplights and quiet storefronts, but all she could really focus on was the way Sophia had been bragging about her all night, loudly, drunkenly, and with an unshakeable certainty in her voice.
There had been a moment as they were getting out where Sophia had slung her arm over Manon’s shoulder and told a small group of artists, half of whom were Grammy-nominated, that this girl right here? This was her girlfriend. Not Dani. Not Lara. Not any of the other girls she could’ve name-dropped or deflected to. Just Manon.
And okay, maybe it wasn’t a real confirmation. Maybe it was drunk talk, loose and sloppy and dipped in the kind of affection that only blooms after three shots and a dancefloor. But Manon couldn’t help the way her stomach flipped anyway. Because even if Sophia hadn’t meant it, it still felt like something. A crack in the ice. A glimpse into the kind of closeness they kept pretending not to name.
The thing is, when Manon wasn’t obsessing over Sophia’s possible alter ego, because, yes, she was still absolutely convinced Sophia was Superwoman, or at least she looked like her, she was stressing about this. Whatever this was. Because they were close, undeniably so. The kind of closeness that made people tilt their heads and ask how long they’d been dating, only to laugh awkwardly when they realized the answer was supposedly “never.”
The girls even joked that they were the mom and dad of the group, and honestly? It tracked. Manon was the one they always ran to when they needed something, or she would be the first one at their defense when something happened, while Sophia hovered around everyone with snacks and tissues and an endless well of soft warnings. They balanced each other in a way that felt deliberate.
But then there were the things no one else saw. Quiet 2AMs in borrowed sweatshirts. Whispered secrets passed between hotel beds and dressing rooms. That one time they stole Lara’s car and drove for nearly an hour just to find this little clearing overlooking the city, where they’d sat on the hood and fed each other snacks from their home countries, dried mangoes, Haribo, strawberry Pocky, honey butter chips. Sophia had pointed out constellations in the sky like she’d memorized them all just in case Manon ever asked. Manon had laughed, leaned back, and stared at her instead. Neither of them had commented on it.
They knocked on each other’s doors more nights than not, both of them already awake, already waiting. Yoonchae and Dani never said anything when they found them curled on each other’s beds the next morning, tangled up like it was the most normal thing in the world. And maybe it was. Maybe it had become normal in the way only inevitable things do.
Sophia was sobering up now, slow and unhurried. Her head leaned against the window, watching the lights blur past like they were melting. She wasn’t fully lucid, not really, but she was alive. Her hand rested palm-up in the middle seat between them. Manon glanced at it. Then at her.
Sophia didn’t say anything. She just slid her fingers across the space between them, brushing lightly against Manon’s knuckles before lacing their hands together. Like it was muscle memory. Like she didn’t even have to think about it. Her eyes stayed on the window, but the corners of her mouth twitched upward in that little almost-smile that always made Manon feel like the ground had tilted slightly under her feet.
Manon looked down at their hands, then back up at Sophia. She wanted to ask a million things. What are you doing? Why are you holding my hand like it’s yours to hold? Why do you still feel warm even though it’s freezing outside and you’re in a paper-thin coat?
She wanted to ask the biggest question of all: What are we?
Because the truth was, she already knew what she wanted them to be. She just didn’t know if Sophia felt the same. And tonight, of all nights, it felt like she was getting closer to finding out. The car slowed. The hotel loomed up ahead, tall and softly lit against the skyline. Manon gently squeezed Sophia’s hand once before letting go, her fingers still tingling from the contact.
Sophia managed to stand without swaying, brushing her hair back and blinking like she’d just woken from a dream. She was quiet now, but not in a sad way. Just settled. She leaned slightly into Manon’s shoulder as they entered the lobby, letting her guide them past the elevators and into the lift.
The air inside was warm and still, humming with low mechanical music. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. Sophia’s head tilted toward Manon’s shoulder again, not quite resting, but close. Close enough to feel the weight of it. Manon stared at the numbers climbing upward, heart still racing for reasons she couldn’t name.
Sophia wasn’t sick. She wasn’t stumbling, which was good. But she was sleepy, and the magic elixir clearly had a crash. Her limbs were heavier, her movements slower. Manon reached into Sophia’s coat pocket and retrieved the keycard she’d slipped there earlier, pressing it tightly between her fingers.
Room 2104. She practically dragged Sophia there, one hand on her waist, her voice soft as she murmured, “Almost there.”
Sophia didn’t protest. She just looked up at her with heavy-lidded eyes, a little dazed, and said, “You always take care of me.”
Manon blinked, startled. “Of course I do.”
There was a pause. A long, held breath of a pause. Then Sophia smiled again and whispered, “That’s why I brag about you.”
Manon’s throat went tight. And she didn’t know what would happen when they got through that door. If Sophia would pass out immediately, if the moment would dissolve with the morning, if this would ever come up again. But right now, with the hotel hallway stretching out behind them and the city far below their feet, it felt like something was about to change. Something big. Something overdue.
Manon pressed the keycard into the lock. The light blinked green.
She opened the door.
And followed Sophia inside.
Sophia didn’t even wait for the lights to come on before flopping onto the bed, limbs spread and hair askew like she’d just won a battle. And in a way, she had some internal war against her powers, her limits, her secrets, and the not-so-small matter of being completely, utterly gone on the girl now rummaging through her suitcase. Manon didn’t complain. She pulled out a familiar pair of sweatpants and a loose shirt Sophia wore during rehearsals, already setting a small glass of water on the nightstand, placing an Advil next to it. Two, actually, because if Megan wandered in hungover, she’d appreciate the foresight. Manon even prepped the trash bin, just in case. All of it done with quiet precision, muscle memory born out of the kind of love you try not to name too early.
And yet behind her, Sophia just lay there. Watching. Her eyes were fixed on Manon like she was watching a miracle walk barefoot across the hotel carpet. And she smiled. Like this was the most ordinary thing in the world: being cared for by the girl she’s had a crush on since the DA days, since Manon showed up with her natural hair out and too many layers and a thousand walls she thought would protect her. Since Sophia tried to shove her own feelings so far down they’d vanish. They didn’t.
She had tried, Lord, had she tried. She’d been mean, acting disinterested whenever she joined the room. But every word was a defense mechanism with cracks. Every time she looked away too fast or laughed too loud, it was a cover-up. And now, years later, Manon was folding her socks neatly by the hotel bed, completely unaware that the girl she’s been gently orbiting was quite literally Superwoman.
And Sophia hated lying to her. It had been gnawing at her, especially after Seoul. That night, when Manon almost fell from the balcony, Sophia wasn’t anywhere nearby. Not physically. But something had pulled her there. A gut feeling, like the air shifted and whispered her name. She arrived seconds before the fall, arms locking around Manon’s waist just in time. It scared her. Not the near-death. It scared her how much she felt. Like the idea of a world without Manon cracked her open in ways she couldn’t tape back together. She had been this close to telling her that night, not about the suit, not yet, but about the real thing. The heart thing. The feelings she had for her.
She didn’t. Manon had already been shaken enough. And Sophia thought, not tonight. Tomorrow. Or the next. Or the next. But tomorrow kept running away.
So instead, she watched her now. In her dress, hair still soft from the stylist’s wand, looking achingly beautiful as she muttered something about not knowing where the toothpaste was. She bent down toward Sophia’s bag, and something green shimmered faintly in the open medicine kit, tucked away between cotton pads and painkillers. Manon didn’t notice.
“Manz,” Sophia muttered, her voice thick, slurred only slightly. She was half sitting up now, clumsy fingers wrestling with the coat she hadn’t managed to shrug off. “You know… I would fly you to Paris right now.”
Manon turned, one brow raised, trying to hide her laugh. “Yeah?” she asked lightly. “You got a private jet I don’t know about?”
Sophia huffed, dramatic, a small smile tugging at her lips as she continued to fight the buttons of her shirt. She looked down at her shirt, growled softly in frustration, then looked up at Manon with something wide and pleading in her eyes. “A little help here, please?”
And God help her, Manon’s heart dropped and soared at the same time. She crossed the room slowly, carefully, like she was approaching something sacred. Her fingers reached for the buttons, gently undoing them one by one, trying not to think too hard about what lay beneath, about the heat she could feel radiating from Sophia’s chest. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She had helped Sophia with quick changes backstage a million times. But this was different. This was close. This was soft. This was…
Her hand stilled at the third button. Just one more tug and the collar parted, just enough to catch the unmistakable shimmer beneath. Not satin. Not lace. Something smooth and otherworldly. Her eyes dropped to it, and there it was, sharp and irrefutable. The symbol. The S. Red against gold.
The crest of Superwoman.
Manon froze with her entire body going tense, lungs suddenly refusing to function properly. Her hand hovered midair like she'd been caught mid-crime, mouth parted, brain rebooting.
No. No, no, no . She must be imagining it. It was late. She was tired. She had always wanted to see it, wanted this, maybe her mind had just conjured it up because she was feeling soft and dizzy and warm and too close to Sophia’s skin.
But it didn’t go away. Because that wasn’t a trick of the light. That wasn’t fabric you buy at Calvin Klein or whatever cryptic designer Sophia normally wore. That was the suit. Superwoman’s suit. Right there, like a second skin under her clothes. Not some cosplay replica. Not some dumb bet with Megan. The real thing. And Manon knew that because she had once been pressed against this suit and she had been unable to stop thinking about it since.
The breath she took turned to static in her lungs. Her whole body buzzed with disbelief. She staggered back an inch, just enough to feel her balance shift, and she looked at Sophia, at her face, soft in the dim light, lashes brushing her cheeks, blissfully unaware. Her brain was doing full mental gymnastics.
Because yes, this was exactly what she’d always suspected, in the deepest corners of her gut. Every excuse. Every sudden exit. Every time Sophia missed something important and came back winded with dust in her hair. Manon had seen the pattern. They’d joked about it. Laughed it off. She’d said it with half-truths and mock-serious smirks in interviews. And Sophia had never denied it. She had just smiled that same smile. And now… here it was. The truth, undeniable and glowing under three undone buttons.
It should have felt like victory.
It didn’t.
It felt like falling.
“You… You’re—” she choked, but the rest didn’t come. Her mouth wouldn’t cooperate, words logjammed behind panic and confusion and oh my god oh my god oh my god she was right. She was so right. And it made her want to throw up. Because this didn’t just mean Sophia had a cool secret. It meant she’d been fighting people. It meant she’d been flying across cities and risking her actual life while also showing up to rehearsals and nailing harmonies and acting like everything was fine. It meant that when they were all backstage complaining about broken nails or lack of sleep, Sophia had been hiding bruises that no one could explain.
Her eyes snapped back to Sophia, who was still lounging, her head swaying slightly. She blinked, confused, clearly out of it. “What?” Sophia mumbled, voice syrupy and soft.
And then she slumped. Right into Manon’s arms.
Gone.
Dead asleep.
Like the weight of her truth had knocked her out cold. Or maybe the alcohol had just finally won. Either way, she pulled Manon down with her, their limbs tangled, cheek resting against Manon’s collarbone. It was too much. Manon’s hand was still clenched around the shirt collar, her knuckles white, eyes wide. She was practically frozen in place, heart hammering like a siren in her chest.
That couldn’t be real.
That couldn’t be real.
She must’ve misread it. Maybe it was a joke shirt. A parody. Maybe Megan dared her to wear it to sleep. Maybe it was merch. Maybe—
It was not merch.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, and the sound barely left her throat. Panic clawed at her chest, wrapping tight like a corset, and she scrambled upright as much as Sophia’s weight would allow, hands fumbling, hair in her face. She shook her gently. Then harder. “Sophia,” she whispered. Then louder: “Sophia. Come on. Wake up. Please.”
No response.
She pinched her arm.
Still nothing.
“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice steady, but the panic was edging in now, high-pitched and spiraling. “You can’t just, you can’t just drop that on me and fall asleep! I need—what am I supposed to do with this? Sophia.”
Her heart was racing so fast she thought she might pass out. She pressed a palm to her own chest, then hovered a hand above Sophia’s mouth. Breathing. Thank god. And her pulse was still strong. Okay. Okay. She wasn’t unconscious from an alien stab wound or cosmic poisoning or whatever else Superwoman dealt with on a weekly basis. She was just… sleeping.
Her fingers ghosted over the collar again, over the edge of the suit. “You lied to me.” She didn’t even sound angry. Just… broken. Confused. Vindicated and terrified in the same breath.
She sat there, stiff and silent, heart clawing at her ribs like it was trying to escape.
What the hell was she supposed to do with this? And why, even in all her panic, did part of her feel weirdly, horrifyingly right?
Like the universe had finally finished the punchline of some cosmic joke she’d been living in.
To make matters worse, she could hear the shuffle of feet outside the door. Light at first, like someone trying not to wake the hallway, but then louder. Laughter followed, Megan’s, unmistakably bright and sharp like always, and then a voice that made Manon want to scream into a pillow. “Sophia?” came the knock. “Are you in there?”
Her entire body went stiff. Still crouched over Sophia, she’s still hovering in that in-between space where adrenaline hadn’t yet let her go. Manon snapped her head toward the door like it might explode at any second. Sophia, for her part, was completely passed out and breathing softly, looking peaceful and oblivious and absolutely wearing a superhero suit under her half-unbuttoned shirt. The actual Superwoman suit. Red and gold and shimmering right there under her collarbone like it wasn’t the biggest secret in the world.
Manon’s hand flew to her hair, fingers tangling in her braids as she tried to wrangle her brain into some semblance of logic. “We’re busy!” she blurted, voice slightly too high, slightly too rushed. There was a beat of silence, then more laughter. “Oh my God,” Megan said from the other side, in that tone that made it clear she was absolutely grinning ear to ear. “I just wanna charge my phone and grab my clothes.”
“We… We’re not clothed!” Manon yelled back. And the second it left her mouth, she realized what she had said. That was not the move. That was not the lie she meant to lean into. But the words had already flown out of her mouth and now she had to commit, even as her cheeks burned hotter than the sun and her pulse started echoing in her ears.
There was a chorus of noise on the other side now, from Lara and Yoonchae going “EW!” with cartoonish disgust, Megan letting out the longest “whooooaaa,” and Dani, the traitor, knocking again just to say, “About damn time!” Which was… confusing. But it bought her the time she needed.
Still red in the face, Manon turned back toward Sophia, who hadn’t moved an inch, her head lolled to one side on the pillow. She looked so innocent like this, so human. You wouldn’t know that she could fly, or lift buses, or stop a building from collapsing with her bare hands. You wouldn’t know that she had saved Manon’s life in Seoul and then climbed into a van the next morning acting like nothing had happened. Like she didn’t spend her nights chasing villains through the sky and her days pretending she couldn’t even do a push-up during training.
The suit shimmered again as Manon reached for the edge of it.She shut her eyes. Because she had to change her. Sophia couldn’t sleep like this. Not with half a costume hanging out like a neon sign. So, carefully she undressed her, hands clumsy with purpose. She tried not to look, really, she did, but her fingers brushed the metal crest, and it hummed faintly against her skin. That made her pause. Made her ache. Made something old and warm crack open inside her chest.
Once Sophia was in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, she tucked her into bed gently, pulling the blanket up to her chin like she was scared she might vanish if she let her get cold. And then, still moving on autopilot, she changed into one of Sophia’s oversized hoodies and a pair of shorts, crawling into the empty bed that wasn’t hers, the one Megan had claimed earlier.
Everything smelled like Sophia. The lights were off. The room was still. For a moment, it was almost peaceful. But Manon didn’t fall asleep right away. She laid there stiffly on her back, one arm flung over her eyes, the other fisted in the blanket, her chest tight and aching and so full she didn’t know how she was still breathing. Every few seconds, her eyes would dart toward the other bed, her ears straining for the soft, steady sound of Sophia’s breathing.
It was still there. But Manon couldn’t stop the thoughts from spiraling. Because she’d known. Some part of her had known. She’d made jokes. Had half-serious theories. Had said it in front of Sophia before. And Sophia had just smiled and told her to get some sleep.
And now… now, it wasn’t a theory.
She is Superwoman. And somehow, she’d still chosen her. She’d held her hand in the car. Had dragged her into bed. Had said “I’d fly you to Paris.” earlier. Manon clutched the blanket tighter. She should be freaking out. She was freaking out.
But even under the panic, under the confusion and the unspeakable weight of this new knowledge, there was a pulse of something else. She wasn’t crazy. And maybe this meant Sophia trusted her. Maybe this was the start of something real.
So Manon shut her eyes and she listened to Sophia breathe. And somewhere, even in all that panic, she smiled.