It had almost been a week since she first stepped through the halls of SM as an official producer, but it already felt like months.
Every day was packed—studio time with Taeyong, who still managed to swing by hers between his own grueling schedules; meetings with producers, vocal directors, even stylists and visual directors for cohesion talks; and then long, back-to-back hours of sound-mapping, demo production, vocal arrangements. Everything Kyungmin had scheduled for her.
Lexie never thought she'd be doing this much this fast.
But that's the thing about doors: once they open, you either walk or you don't.
And she walked in, headfirst.
Thanks to Kyungmin, she had finally made contact with various teams, beyond just NCT 127 and Taeyong's project. But she didn't just want to be efficient—she wanted to be accurate. She wanted to know their voices.
So she created her own database.
One-on-one vocal sessions with almost every artist and trainee scheduled for projects:
— Aespa. Red Velvet. WayV. NCT Dream.
And for the upcoming groups:
— NCT Japan. And both a yet-unnamed girl group and boy group in development.
It wasn't fancy. No performance grading. No long critiques. Just:
"Sing how you're most comfortable."
"Now try this note."
"Can you belt this with your chest voice instead of a head voice?"
She recorded everything. Studied them quietly.
Lines and beats would eventually come not just from what sounded cool, but from what fit them.
Because she wasn't just producing songs—she was listening.
* * *
On her breaks, Lexie started doing something that wasn't in her itinerary.
No vocal guides to review. No arrangement sheets in hand. No notes on production layers or mix revisions.
Just a plain black tumbler of water—and the most disarming thing she had—herself.
She wandered down the trainee general practice room—always during off-peak hours, when stress hung heavier than beats, and when the air smelled more of effort than promise. The first time she entered, the music stopped like someone had pulled the plug. The sound of sneaker soles against vinyl flooring froze mid-step.
Every trainee's gaze followed her like a ripple in still water.
They didn't know what to make of her.
A woman walking in with no manager badge, no clipboard, no air of evaluation. Her face was bare of judgment, her posture relaxed. But still—company staff didn't just show up. And producers? They especially didn't come downstairs for small talk.
Lexie gave a quiet smile and lowered herself onto the floor, cross-legged. No throne to speak from. No distance to maintain.
"You're NCT Japan?" she asked casually in Japanese, turning to a group of boys panting near the mirrored wall. One of them blinked, surprised, then hesitantly nodded.
"Ohhh... I heard your demo last week," she added with an easy grin. "You're the one with that raspy tone, right? The third verse?"
The boy's eyes widened—and then lit up. His shoulders straightened, pride carefully stitched into his breathless chest. The tension in the room deflated like a balloon tied too tightly.
When one of the boy group trainees walked past and wordlessly offered her a peeled tangerine, Lexie accepted it with a bow and a soft "고마워," in Korean, then turned instinctively toward a girl trainee murmuring something in another corner. The girl had been translating softly under her breath to her co-trainee.
"我可以说中文," Lexie said gently. I can speak Chinese.
The girl flinched—then looked up in surprise. Her expression softened into a stunned little smile. Lexie smiled back, tucking her hair behind her ear as she scooted closer to include her in the circle.
Then came bursts of laughter, awkward silences filled with growing comfort, and a rotating exchange of snacks and stories. They talked about the smallest things: sore calves, shared dorm chores, awkward stage names, funny lyric translations.
One trainee, barely fifteen, asked her what kind of music she liked to make. She answered simply.
"Music that sounds like you. Not the best vocals or the most perfect pitch. Just... you."
She never gave direct advice. Never corrected posture or offered to rework a melody. That wasn't her role—not today. Not here.
She was building something else.
Trust.
And trust didn't come with instructions or credentials. It came with showing up and sitting on the floor when no one expected you to. Speaking their languages—not just linguistically, but emotionally. Earning the weight of their stories before ever asking for the weight of their vocals.
She listened. To their words. To their fears.
And more than anything—she listened to what wasn't said.
That was the kind of producer she was learning to be.
The kind who knew that before you ask someone to deliver magic...
You had to be the kind of person who heard it in them, first.
* * *
The next morning, her disguise was deliberate: an oversized dark hoodie, baseball cap pulled low, black mask secured over the bottom half of her face. She even carried a warm tumbler of ginger tea for good measure.
She wasn't sick. But her nerves said otherwise.
Today was the scheduled production meeting with NCT 127—the full team. Not just Taeyong. Not just early arrangement planning. This time, the collaborative studio was booked with engineers, sound directors, lyricists, and a few core producers from other divisions. The kind of setup where no one came unprepared. Or unnoticed.
Lexie walked in quietly, claiming a corner seat near the main interface panel. Taeyong gave her a nod and a faint smile from across the room. Jaehyun offered a slight wave. Doyoung muttered a dry joke to Johnny, who chuckled under his breath.
And Mark was there.
Of course he was.
She didn't expect otherwise. Still, the moment her eyes met his—just for a fraction of a second—it was enough to unravel her carefully wrapped nerves. He looked like he had something to say. But he didn't. Not here. Not now.
She dropped her gaze and busied herself with the project file, fingers scrolling through the vocal layers on her screen like nothing had happened.
Except something had.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed movement—Haechan nudging Mark's elbow, leaning in with a quiet whisper. She couldn't hear what was said, but the shift in the air was unmistakable.
Lexie kept her focus glued to her notes, though her peripheral awareness sharpened. She could feel it—the weight of Haechan's glance flickering her way for a beat too long, like he was silently connecting dots. Like he knew.
She tightened her grip on her stylus pen.
Not now. Not in front of the team.
As the meeting got underway, she made a conscious effort to stay out of the spotlight. She took notes. Pulled up reference stems. Only spoke when directly asked. Her comments were sharp, on-point, but brief.
And yet—
"Lexie-ssi," one of the vocal engineers called mid-discussion, "...is there any chance you could give this vocal arrangement a once-over before we lock it in?"
Her fingers paused above her keyboard.
Before she could respond, another producer added gently, "You've got an instinct for layering—especially how it hits live. We can revise if your version flows better."
Taeyong looked over, waiting—not pressuring, but hoping. The kind of trust born not just from proximity, but respect.
Lexie hesitated.
She could feel Mark's presence a few seats away, subtle but grounding. Like a tether she was trying hard not to acknowledge. She couldn't afford to flinch, not in front of a team this seasoned.
She nodded once.
"Sure," she said, voice low behind the mask. "Let me pull the rough."
The vocal layers played through the studio monitors. Lexie adjusted the panning, refined the harmony overlaps, and suggested a soft harmony to bridge the second verse to the chorus—subtle, but enough to fill in the emotional drop. She didn't overdo it. Just enough to match the tempo of the theme they were trying to carve: emotional, but not explosive.
Someone pressed the spacebar to pause the track. A beat of silence followed.
"That hits different," Jaehyun muttered thoughtfully.
Taeyong gave a small nod. "Yeah. It lands more honest."
The engineer turned to her again. "Thanks, Lexie."
She just dipped her head slightly, her posture low. Her voice soft. And for the rest of the meeting, she only spoke when asked directly—her answers clean. Professional. Almost detached.
And for Mark, he hadn't said much the entire time. Nothing directed at her—not even the usual nod of acknowledgment he gave everyone when they settled in.
But she could feel it.
The silence wasn't empty—it was loud. It pressed at her ears like static in a quiet room. She wasn't looking at him, but she knew he was holding back. Maybe words. Maybe questions. Maybe nothing. But still, something.
She told herself to focus on the screen, on the harmonics, on the voices layered neatly across the digital workspace.
Listen like a producer, she reminded herself. Not like someone who remembered his voice—before it became a sound the world paid to hear.
And so, she listened.
To Jaehyun's falsetto on the bridge.
To Doyoung's tone shift on the chorus.
To the technical feedback from the sound engineers.
To the lyricist's comment about the emotional direction of verse two.
And none of it—none of it—came from him.
But he was still there. She felt him like a song on mute.
She adjusted the levels, offered notes when asked, and stayed seated through the playback, even though a part of her wanted to leave the room the second her tasks were done. But leaving would make it real. And right now, she needed it to stay just professional.
She kept her hoodie on. Her cap low. Her mask secure. Let them think she was sick. Let him think so too.
And when one of the junior engineers leaned over and asked if she could give a quick Lexie-style polish to the beat layering, she gave a quiet nod and did just that—clean, efficient, effortless.
Because that's what she was here to be.
Not a past. Not a question. Not a mess.
Just a producer with ears that listen.
✦ ✦ ✦
Right beside him, Haechan shifted slightly, catching the split-second eye contact with the precision only someone who knew them both too well would notice.
He leaned in and subtly nudged Mark's elbow.
"Bro..." Haechan murmured under his breath, just loud enough for Mark to hear. "That was loud."
Mark didn't reply.
Didn't look at him. Didn't even flinch.
But Haechan smirked, sensing the way Mark's grip subtly tightened around the pen in his hand.
He didn't push further—just leaned back in his seat, the ghost of a knowing look still playing on his face.
Like he'd clocked something that hadn't been said out loud.
Mark kept his eyes on the screen, jaw locked. He didn't say much.
Didn't trust himself to.
Across the room, Lexie nodded along to something one of the engineers said, one hand flipping through a printed arrangement sheet while the other hovered near her laptop. Her voice was muffled behind her face mask, low and clipped, professional to the last syllable.
She hadn't looked at him once.
But somehow, she didn't need to.
He could still hear her.
In the subtle choices she made during the meeting.
The way she adjusted a vocal layering suggestion, and how every producer in the room paused, then nodded, like she'd just unlocked something they hadn't noticed was missing.
The way she kept her mask on, her cap low, hoodie pulled over her head, and body angled slightly away from him—as if that might be enough to keep the noise between them silent.
But it wasn't. Mark heard everything.
She wasn't loud, but she didn't have to be.
Lexie didn't raise her voice. She just made people lean in.
She didn't need to command the room—she shaped it quietly, beat by beat, bar by bar.
Even when she was hiding.
Even when she was acting like he wasn't in the same room.
She had once told him—back when things were simpler, maybe even before she realized what she was capable of—that it's not always about the ones who speak the most.
"Sometimes it's the ones who listen that change the entire song."
Back then, he thought she was just talking about producing.
Now, sitting across from her in the same studio but on opposite ends of something they never named, Mark wasn't so sure.
Because today, in a room filled with producers and sound engineers and lyricists—he had never felt so much noise wrapped in so much silence.
She hadn't said a single word to him.
Not a greeting. Not even a glance.
And still, that silence was loud.