#if anything i can watch it tomorrow morning ✌️ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

angelaiswriting · 2 years ago

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Stage Love (2 of 3) | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fake dating!Choi Joon-woong x fem!reader)

✏️ Summary: things finally start moving between you and Joong-gil, but what happens when, following the leak of some pictures, your agency decides to exploit a (fake) dating scandal between you and Choi Joon-woong for its own economic gain? (Not requested, based on an idea by @kind-wolf)

✏️ A/N: took me forever to write this part, had a breakdown in the middle, and it turned out so long I’d need a part three. Bon appétit😬 jokes aside, this isn’t exactly what I was aiming for, but then again my fics do whatever the f they want, so... Let me know if you’re down for a pt. 3 or not.✌️

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff, (maybe still a bit of) slowburn, (slight angst, maybe?), pining, and (light?) smut, so 18+ ONLY! > Fingering f/r, oral f/r, mentions of handjobs, dry-humping; mentions of death, of a corpse, and of suicide, grieving?. Mentions of the show Tomorrow but no spoilers. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21,7k

part one << PART TWO >> part three

The first time you receive that unsigned bouquet of flowers, you worry your home address might have been leaked somehow and that some fan has decided to go above and beyond to show you their love and support. After the porter hands it to you one day after a meeting with Joon-woong and the team for the soundtrack of an upcoming drama, you bring it up to your apartment and dissect it like it’s a specimen in a laboratory you have to study.

It’s the paranoia that’s been haunting you since that time, years ago, when a fan gift contained a smartly-concealed camera, you’re well aware of it. Just as you’re aware of how your whole team – not to mention your whole agency – is big on keeping your privacy intact (or whatever part of it can be protected), going as far as to decline any request for videos or interviews showing the inside of your house. They’re your reason why there’s no need to worry, but you still find yourself pulling each flower apart before putting them in a vase of water when you’ve made sure there’s nothing suspicious about the gift.

Maybe it’s just something your mother sent you and that she simply forgot to sign, you tell yourself. Or maybe it’s from Bit-na, your friend you haven’t seen in forever but whom you miss dearly. But when you bring it up on your Sunday night call with her as you’re watching one of your usual shows together, you come to find out she isn’t the sender.

The second bouquet – tulips, this time, and you wonder just how expensive they must have been this time of year – is delivered to you the next Monday morning just as you’re about to step out of the hall of your condominium right behind your manager. This time, to your relief, you notice a lilac-colored card attached to the wrapping, but you know you’ll have no time to properly look at it before it’s late at night. Before that, you have calls and messages and emails to take care of, and then another lyric writing session for the last-minute collab song you have with Choi Joon-woong.

“Who’s sending you flowers?” your manager, Ji-young, asks as you step out of your clothes to change into your interview outfit, and all you can do is answer with a genuine, “I really have no clue,” as you check your appearance in the mirror one last time before you’re ready to meet today’s interviewer.

People still want to know things about your collaboration album with Park Joong-gil, and pretty much no one is inclined to stop talking about it yet – your music, your chemistry, the raw behind-the-scenes content your agencies posted on your youtube channels and on your social media accounts. Both tabloids and fans ended up blowing that deal out of proportion – although you’re really not complaining: if anything, they’re giving you the perfect excuse to keep on reminiscing all those months spent working with him. The news about an extremely possible future song together hasn’t been leaked yet, but you’re honestly curious to see what the public’s reaction is going to be – both because of how much they all loved the two of you together, and because you really want to see how far whatever you have behind closed doors (not much so far, but still a lot more than you’ve ever had with anyone else, probably) can go.

When you’re back to your van by the end of the day, after a quick dinner on the set of the promotional shoot for a perfume, the tulips you received in the morning look like they have given up on life. They wilted, and it’s like they’re judging you for leaving them in the backseat for all those hours.

Paranoia threatens to rear its head again, but then you remember there being a card and you’re quick at pulling it out of the envelope.

I’m not sure I enjoy this waiting game of yours :( — pjg

It makes you chuckle, that sad emoji he drew at the end of the sentence – and all over the small piece of paper, like it’s middle school all over again. Still, there’s a part of you that can’t help but think, how cute! You really want him to never stop doing these random things that always make you feel special when you least expect them.

Your smile rivals the sun in brightness when you unlock your phone.

[10:09 PM] you: got your flowers x

That’s what you text him, and then you send a picture of his bouquet with a cheeky oops that makes you smile like a child in the back of your van. You can feel Ji-young’s eyes on you through the rear-view mirror, but she doesn’t ask what’s got you smiling like that – she’s quick-witted and as great an observer as Park Joong-gil himself, which means she knew you went down on him the moment you stepped through the door of your apartment the day you ended up fingering yourself to the memory of him.

[10:13 PM] joong-gil 💗: is that how you treat my gifts? :(

He makes you chuckle. He’s actually been bringing more happiness to your life than there has been in a long time. It’s the genuine kind, the type that makes you warm inside and wraps your heart in a feeling of fuzziness that gives it nothing but rest. You realize now, two blocks away from your apartment, that you haven’t made a single origami butterfly ever since your dinner date with him, two weeks ago, and probably even a while before that.

You also don’t remember when you changed his contact name, when you removed his last name and added that pulsing heart emoji, but tonight it takes you by surprise. Like you’re finally realizing that he’s been making your heart beat a little faster.

[10:14 PM] you: sorry, long day. i barely had a break :( btw was it you who sent me roses last week?

He doesn’t reply to you straight away, and you have the time to reach your condominium, take the elevator, and even change into your pajamas before you get a text back from him. In the meantime, you eye the almost completely dry roses sitting in an empty vase on the windowsill of the kitchen like they might have grown cameras of their own.

Instead of messaging, he rings you a call.

“I know you must be tired, but I needed to hear your voice,” he says as soon as you pick up.

‘I needed to.’ He needed to, you smile. It hits you deeper than an ‘I wanted to’ ever would, somehow. Like he can live his days and like he can wait for your schedule to clear, but also like he wants you and your company so badly that he simply can’t hold back and wait.

It makes you feel important. Like you really do matter in this crazy-paced world of yours, where you can never fully let your guard down or take the foot off of the gas pedal.

So, you chuckle, and you’re so empty-headed, drowning in this crush you have for him that is blooming at the speed of light, that all you can greet him with is a lame, breathless, “hey.”

“To answer your question, yes, I did send you roses.”

The grin on your lips makes your cheeks hurt when you plop down onto the couch, too tired to go back to your bedroom after the glass of cold water you got from the fridge.

“You could’ve signed it,” you giggle, no real bite behind your words. “I dissected it, I was paranoid that someone had found out where I live and sent yet another spy cam.”

He’s silent for half a second before his, “shit,” hits you along with the sound of ruffled sheets. “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to cause all that. I actually did write a card, but then I panicked at the last second because of how cheesy it was and I threw it away.”

You really don’t know what this feeling setting your soul on fire is, but it makes you want to giggle and blush and hide your face underneath your warm blanket while you kick your feet. It makes you feel so good that it wipes away the exhaustion of the day and leaves you a clean slate, ready to start afresh tomorrow morning.

“Are you still there?”

“Oh, yeah! Sorry! You lost me when you said you wrote a cheesy card. I bet that would’ve been the cutest shit ever. The Park Joong-gil writing cheesy stuff to me?” You dramatically fan yourself with a hand despite him being unable to see you. “Every fangirl’s fantasy, I can assure you of that.”

He laughs, and two things happen almost at the same time.

One, it cuts your breath short – the sound that leaves his lips, at the other end of the receiver, and you can imagine him throwing his head back the way he often does when he’s really amused, closing his eyes and scrunching his nose up in the cutest way imaginable.

And two, your heart dangerously skips a beat. You’re taken aback by the sudden realization that you’re in so deep when it comes to him that you can’t even imagine how you’d be if things went south. If anything happened and the ‘us’ you’re both walking hand in hand towards shattered like an illusion reflecting on a mirror. You really don’t know how many paper butterflies your soul can take, and you don’t really think you’ll ever have another one tattooed anywhere on your body or on your soul.

“I really miss you.” He says it so intensely, with so much determination, that it really must be the truth. It reaches your heart like a thorn that hurts so good, somehow, makes it bleed warm honey, and you’re quick at shooing the butterflies away.

“I miss you, too. I want to meet up again, but I want to be able to hang out with you long enough.”

“It’s alright. You know I’m willing to wait for you.” And then, before you even have the time to think about all the feelings his words stir up inside you, he’s asking for your plans for tomorrow.

You end up staying on the line for longer than you anticipated, as it always goes with him, and at some point, the voice call turns into a video call, even if you feel like you’re unpresentable, with your make-up badly removed and the stained pajama shirt you should have thrown into the wash two days ago but didn’t. When you fall asleep, unable to keep your eyes open any longer, Joong-gil stays on the line for a while. He watches you, commits to memory the way you look when you sleep, the lines of your face, the way your eyes move underneath your closed eyelids, or how your lips part and stay like that.

You don’t know that and he won’t confess it, but it does something to him. He’s always meant it whenever he told you he wanted to get to know you in the past, but tonight the sight of you makes him think he’s ready to open up again – makes him believe he can fully open his heart up again and allow himself to be vulnerable with you.

The studio feels cramped. Between the lyricists, the RMT’s producer, your manager Ji-young, Joon-woong’s own manager… You’re sitting on the leather two-seat couch in the corner and breathing feels like such a hard task, like everything’s closing in on you – the walls of the studio, the equipment, the physical confines of your own body, bone and skin and flesh.

It’s been a while since this claustrophobic feeling last hit you this way, and you really don’t know what it is about today, but not even the memory of the video call you had with Park Joong-gil a few days ago seems to be able to ease your nerves.

I need a breather, but there’s no way those words manage to leave your lips. Instead, you can only look up at your friend and he seems to pick up on what’s going on from where he’s sitting next to the producer.

Joon-woong asks for a break – everyone seems to need it this morning, after all, everyone’s stress levels are way too high – and takes you up to the roof by pulling on your hand.

The air has a chilly bite to it and there are dark clouds on the horizon confirming the weather forecasts calling for possible storms. Once again, you’re glad you’re wearing Joong-gil’s hoodie – you didn’t even remember never giving it back to him after that night at Jumadeung until you found it at the bottom of your closet this morning. It still feels just as warm as it did that night, even if it’s lost any last trace of his scent, and suddenly there’s this restless feeling in the pit of your stomach that you can only describe as a wish to go back there. Go back to those fairy lights, the chocolate cake you shared that night, and the peaceful atmosphere that made you feel like you finally really did have some privacy. Like you could breathe and belong, even if for a little while.

“Are you alright?” Joon-woong asks, handing you a cup of smoking hot tea before pulling you down onto the bench to sit next to him. You didn’t even notice him leaving to grab you something to drink, nor whether someone else brought it to him instead.

“I am now, thanks.” Even you can feel the shakiness in the smile that stretches across your lips, but you can’t quite put a finger on the reason behind it. On why today’s like this, with nothing seemingly going right and everything going wrong – the corrupted music file, the writers of the drama calling for some last-minute changes to the lyrics of their main song, the technological problems in the recording room, and then everyone packed into that studio like it’s some can of sardines. “It’s just…”

He never takes his eyes off of you, not even when you look down at the paper cup between your hands and exhale a long sigh – you don’t really look at him, but you do feel his stare.

“It’s been a long… Hell, a long forever,” you chuckle, turning to face him for a moment before looking back at the rooftops and the clouds far away as Seoul feels like it’s stretching beyond its physical limits. You’re this close to tears that you know they’ll escape your hold if you were to look at your friend for a second too long. “I’m really tired. I feel like the break I had after the tour with Joong-gil passed me by in a flash and my stress never left. I wish…”

Another sigh. You’re grateful for the opportunities you’re given – the collaboration deals with other artists, the odd modeling or acting gigs, your fans and their gifts, and the fact that you’re still here, kicking and screaming instead of flying away.

“I wish this stupid soundtrack would go smoothly, at least,” you say, leaning back against the bench and letting your head fall back. Your gaze trails up to the sky above and that one plane flying by, leaving behind a straight line of white that feels nothing like what your life feels at the moment. You’re jumping from one thing to the next, juggling the billion different appointments that swarm your daily schedule – photoshoots, recording sessions, songwriting, interviews, promotions, training, dancing, and even fan meets, although those will start in a bit.

It takes you a moment – it’s actually taken you months – to realize that the anniversary is coming up and that soon it’s going to be fifteen years. Maybe that’s it – your soul just knows it, feels it, and all it craves is to go home, be with your mother, kick mud and water on the shore, and cry it all out in the freezing rain where you can pretend it’s just water, that on your face, and not tears.

You didn’t even fully realize it when, the day after your call with Joong-gil, you read the synopsis of this drama whose soundtrack you’re supposed to record today with Joon-woong. The main trope. The characters’ backgrounds, the lives concealed behind the façade of the here-and-now. The bittersweet happy endings the episodes leave you with, a reminder that the world has been painted in a million different color shades.

You don’t know why you break down when Joon-woong puts an arm around your shoulders and squeezes your forearm with one of those big hands of his. But that’s exactly what you do, and you have to take a long sip of your scorching hot tea to try and pretend like nothing’s happening, but the tears that managed to get to your lips make the tea taste salty. Maybe it really is the stress. The stress, and the exhaustion, and the fact that you’ve been craving Park Joong-gil’s soothing company probably even more than you do realize, or that you ever even thought possible.

Joon-woong pulls you to himself when you don’t immediately go back to your usual cheery persona. He wraps you in a hug that smells like coffee and aftershave and laundry detergent and safety. It makes you feel like a little kid – both the fact that he’s so goddamn tall and the fact that you’re crying in someone’s arms. And that’s when the sobs you’ve managed to hold in just spill out freely now.

“Why don’t we go out after we’re done here?” he asks after some time.

His head is resting on yours, still leaning against his shoulder, and your sobs have subsided. The tear streaks on your face are still wet, and your lips are still parted as you stare at Seoul’s skyline, but at least you feel somewhat lighter, like the weight on your shoulders has finally gotten more bearable.

“I can’t.” You shake your head slightly and finally pull yourself back together enough to finish your now lukewarm tea. It doesn’t give you that sensation of warmth it gave you at first, when Joon-woong handed you the cup, but you reason it’s still better than the biting cold of the wind that just picked up. “I have a full day of recording for my album tomorrow. And then there’s an interview I’ve been putting off for a while, and then they want me on a—”

“You need to breathe,” Joon-woong interrupts you, turning to look at you with concern painted all over his features. “You need a break before you break. Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been going through this? I wouldn’t have been mad if you had turned this collab offer down…”

“I really wanted to do this, though,” you reply, voice low. “It felt like a great opportunity to finally do something with a friend…”

“Not at the cost of working you to the bone, no!” He’s not mad, but his concern takes you aback nonetheless. It’s on his face, in his voice, in the way he reminds you of every single time your mother’s ever worried about her only child’s well-being. It makes you sit there for a moment and think, and you realize that there are more people that care about you than you ever stopped to consider.

“Tomorrow’s gonna be aired in three weeks,” you reason. “Who else would they hire on such short notice?”

There’s the little-kid part of you who’s standing on the precipice, ready to apologize for taking on more than you thought you’d be able to handle. Two albums in a year, a drama collaboration, the interviews that inevitably follow, and those extra modeling gigs you agreed upon as a way to broaden your horizons. But why would you apologize when this is part of the job? When staying relevant is just as necessary as the next good thing in this line of work?

Eventually, Joon-woong agrees with you. Yeah, finding a stand-in after all these delays would be a problem, he says, looking back out at what’s visible of the city from up here.

“Let’s go to Jumadeung after we’re done here,” you offer as you’re walking down the fire-emergency staircase with a clearer mind to go back to the recording room downstairs. “I really do need to relax for a minute, and you probably do, too.”

He agrees, again. If you’re lucky and you manage to record everything by the end of the day, then you’ll also be able to celebrate a work well done tonight as well.

And as it turns out, you do have some luck, this time.

The producer pulled some magic trick out of his hat while you and Choi Joon-woong were on the rooftop, and everything’s working smoothly now. The stress levels have reached an all-time low, and whoever wasn’t strictly needed for the recording session has been kicked out, which left only the producer, your friend, and yourself in the studio.

You also end up having fun. You’ve known Joon-woong ever since he signed up with your agency and you were still a trainee, but you would have never guessed he’d be this much of a fun person to work with. He makes faces in the booth when something doesn’t turn out as perfect as he’d like, and he also makes faces when you hit a particular note in one of your parts.

All that makes for some good content you end up recording and before you leave the studio way after sun-down, you both end up posting selfies online calling for some ‘secret project’ that’s about to drop. After that, you lock your phone and let your friend take you to his car.

Jumadeung is still as much of a pretty view as it was the last time you stepped foot in it what feels like a lifetime ago even though it was just last March. The only thing that’s different is your state of mind: with no trace of post-performance adrenaline and excitement, you’re a bit tired but on the right path to unplugging for an hour or two.

You order food and drinks, and end up playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who’s going to pay for tonight’s outing – you will, but no one will ever catch you complaining about anything, not when Choi Joon-woong has become like a little brother of sorts for you.

Joon-woong also doesn’t complain. Instead, you get to see a side of him you haven’t seen in forever. The fun friend, caring and sweet, ready to listen to your rants with both ears and punch your problems in the face with both hands. And in the peace of the booth, under the slightly dim hues of the fairy lights that seem to promise to keep any and all secrets in their embrace, you find out that your tongue doesn’t have much of a problem letting out some of the weights you’ve been carrying on your back.

“I’ve seen your interview, you know?” he says after Jade, the middle-aged owner, comes with more chips and shoots you a wink. “You get so flustered whenever someone brings Park Joong-gil up.” His giggle is half mirth and half somaek, and the way he squints his eyes when he pinches your cheek makes you laugh a bit too loudly. “You really make it too easy to know you like him.”

“You’re drunk,” you chuckle, pulling his hand away from your face and intertwining your fingers with his. “You have no clue what you’re talking about. Eat this.”

He eats the pork and then drinks from the water bottle you give him, and in the meantime, you try to quieten down that buzzing feeling going off in your chest. Your cheeks heat up, too, and you press the backs of your hands to your skin in a futile attempt to make that blood rush away from your face, but you’re not even able to suppress the smile that stretches across your lips.

You’re down bad for Park Joong-gil, there’s no shying away from that. It’s a fact. It’s obviously not the first time you realize this, but it’s probably the first time the realization hits you this strong. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re at Jumadeung, where everything feels surreal and just as possible as it always is in the wildest of fantasies. It’s also where things started moving between the two of you, like someone cast a spell and tied the same thread to both of your wrists, linking you together. Maybe it’s the fact that this is the first time someone who’s not Bit-na has called you out on it. You want to believe it’s definitely not the beer or the soju, nor the fact that you’re drunker on exhaustion than you are on alcohol.

Joon-woong’s hand on your forehead suddenly pulls you out of your reverie. “You’re also burning, you blushing little thing!”

You stare at him for a moment – unmoving, shocked, confused, and definitely a bit embarrassed, but then you’re laughing in his face, at his antics, at that cute expression his face has morphed into.

“Does he even know?” he asks after you make him sit back and drink more water.

“Yeah.” Distractedly, you think that maybe you should pull the rest of the beer to your side of the table so that he’s not tempted to have more. “He’s into me, too.”

His gasp makes you smile at how dramatic he is at times. “You told him?”

You think back to that night in Joong-gil’s apartment, after your dinner date. For a split second that seems to stretch on forever, you feel him between your legs, spread out on his couch – his fingers knuckles-deep inside you and his lips wrapped around your clit. You hear the way he grunted and then spoke sweet nothings you barely had the mental capacity to understand but that still felt so fucking hot in that gravel tone of his.

Would that count as you telling him?

The feeling that maybe you’ve never actually outright confessed your feelings to him sneaks up on you bit by bit.

“I think so… It was pretty obvious, though,” you reply, but it doesn’t hit him fast enough before you actually spot Joong-gil walking up to the counter.

It feels like being in a dream, what with the hazy atmosphere of Jumadeung and its fairy lights and whatnot. Maybe he’s just a figment of my imagination, you tell yourself as your mouth goes dry. Did you drink that much? Did you fall asleep? Are you really down this bad for a man that your brain has to conjure up images of him everywhere you might go?

“Are you two official, then?”

Are you? You don’t know, you haven’t met in person even once during the last two weeks. You never thought of asking whether he’s also seeing someone else, although such a thought feels so absurd the moment it bubbles its way up to the top of all your thoughts that you dismiss it immediately. Of course he’s not – he wouldn’t be sending you flowers or spending that much time on calls or texting (sexting, too, maybe?) you the way he always does.

“In private, yeah, I guess? I don’t know.” Going public seldom turns out to be the brightest idea in your line of work, after all, so that’s off the list – for now? Or forever? Those are questions you can’t really answer.

You watch Joong-gil hand Jade his card and you can’t help but stare at the way his black coat highlights the line of his shoulders. You want to walk up to him and hold him from behind, like you did that night, in his shower – his forehead pressed against the tiles and your hand wrapped around his aching cock as you peppered kisses over the expanse of his back while working him towards his release.

“What do you mean you don’t—”

“Hi,” you smile, breathless, when Joong-gil has finally turned around and is close enough to your booth to hear you. His mere presence short-circuits your brain while you slip down the rabbit hole of this crush you have on him a little more. It’s like you never resurfaced since you climbed down the set of stairs that leads to Jumadeung, that night all those months ago. You walked down, one step after the other, hand in hand with him, and then part of your soul has remained trapped within the confines of this fairyland dream of a bar, sitting in front of a man as charismatic as Park Joong-gil.

The surprise flashing across his face isn’t hard to miss. He staggers in his steps for half a second when he spots you, lips parted and brows furrowed, before he comes back to his senses and halts by your table. “Hey.”

Joong-gil eyes you for just a moment before his gaze trails over to Joon-woong, sitting next to you, eating the last pieces of his samgyeopsal and ranting on about you and the singer he hasn’t noticed is standing right next to him.

“Are you leaving?” you ask. “Why don’t you sit with us?”

Your heart is racing inside your chest. It’s everywhere in your body, but most of all in the butterflies that go off in your stomach at the sight of him. He looks just as charming as ever, dressed in all black, with his hair slightly tousled and his eyes back on you.

It’s then that Joon-woong spots his very own idol, almost chokes on his water, and then jumps up to his feet before pushing Joong-gil to sit down next to you. “Speak of the devil!” His tipsy chuckle is cut short by a hiccup, and you suddenly regret getting him drunk, or even just allowing him to drink as much as he did. “You two look good together,” he whistles, and it’s then that you lean across the table to slap a hand over his mouth.

“Shh! What are you doing?” you reprimand him with a hiss, quickly glancing around in case any of the other patrons might have overheard your friend.

But Joon-woong simply giggles, fixes the both of you with a knowing smirk he’ll probably have no recollection of come morning, and then leans back against the booth.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your date.” Joong-gil’s voice bites at your skin when he speaks, and you almost don’t turn around to look at him. But you do – of course you do, it’s like he’s a magnet and you’re a ferromagnetic butterfly that can’t stay away from his flower.

It’s like it hurts him, the idea that you’d be out and about with someone else when he agreed on waiting until November to really see you again. To see you, and touch you, and… Your neck grows hotter at the mere thought of what you promised him and all the mental images your mind comes up with late at night, when you’re left alone to wonder how he actually is in bed.

“A da—” You flip a finger between you and Joon-woong, incredulous. “We’re just— This is not a date,” you chuckle. Why would he think that? Why are you nervous?

“Yeah?”

“You two should DRT already.”

Both you and Joong-gil turn to look at Joon-woong when he suddenly speaks out of nowhere, seemingly more sober than he’s been in a while tonight.

“Define the relationship,” he explains, grinning at how comically identical the questioning expressions on both of your faces are. “Y/N says she doesn’t know where you two stand, but I did fear for my safety for a moment when I saw the way you were glaring at me,” he tells Joong-gil. “But what would I know?” he pouts right after, his right hand automatically going for his beer bottle.

Less than half an hour later, after forcing Joon-woong out of the door of Jumadeung, Ryeon and Ryung-gu come to pick him and his car up, and the way Ryeon and Joong-gil briefly eye each other before respectfully bowing their heads in greeting makes you think and worry and realize that they used to be something whose details you don’t even know.

Is it wrong to want a friend’s ex special someone? You’ve been asking yourself that question for a while now, unable to come up with an actual answer, even just a shred of reassurance that it is, in fact, alright. The heart wants what it wants, after all, unable of being controlled, but that feeling – like you’re betraying Goo Ryeon’s friendship – still lurks around the pit of your stomach every once in a while. Not even the smile Ryung-gu sends your way from his seat behind the wheel after cheerfully greeting you manages to put your soul at rest.

You end up going home with Joong-gil. Another bike ride, of course, with your body pressed so close to his back that you can almost feel your own heart beat in his chest and his in yours. He feels so close yet so far, and you can barely believe your luck (or misfortune) at having run into him at Jumadeung.

It shouldn’t, really, and you know it, but it somehow still eats away at you, the fact that you might have come off as someone who doesn’t have time to hang out with him but seemingly still goes out with anyone else. It has every last one of your nerves on high alert, and his silence during the whole elevator ride up to your floor doesn’t help ease them in the slightest.

It’s like a rift in your equilibrium, in that game of waiting you’ve both been playing since the end of your joint world tour. It’s also the first time you feel like you’re standing on opposite sides of the world despite standing side by side in a metal box.

The vase of pink cosmos flowers you received two days ago is the first thing Joong-gil sees when he silently steps foot in your living room. It’s another one of his gifts, one that came accompanied by a card with five verses of a love song you found out you both adore. The balance they were supposed to symbolize now seems to shake lightly underneath your feet.

“I think Joon-woong is right.” You’re the first to break the silence, still plagued by that sense of guilt that has snuck up on you out of nowhere. “About… clearly stating where we stand.”

“I’ve already told you I want you.”

“I’ve never been good at this, and I just want to make sure we’re exclusive.” Your eyes lock with his from the other side of the coffee table, unable to look away when he takes his coat off and lays it down on the back of your couch. “That there’s no one else.”

“There’s no one else.” His gaze softens a bit, and it prompts you to move closer to him until you’re almost standing toe to toe.

“And that wasn’t a date. It’s just been a shit day an–”

“I believe you.” His smile is what ends up easing your nerves enough to put them back to sleep, and when he cups your face in both of his hands, you find yourself breathing a bit better. “I didn’t mean to come off as jealous. You have no explaining to do. I just… God, I missed you so much that seeing you there with him got to my head.”

The smirk slowly grows on your lips, despite you trying your best to bite it back, and soon enough it’s a full-blown smile that makes you feel like you’re brighter than the sun itself. It scorches away any other thought in your head and leaves you with just him. “You missed me?” It comes out as a whisper, intoxicated as you are by what’s left of your drinks and the scent of him pulling you in closer than your stance already has the two of you.

“So damn much.” His voice lowers, and you’d be embarrassed by the way that affects you if you hadn’t expected it – the way that shiver trickles down your spine and straight to in-between your legs, like you haven’t been getting yourself off on the memory of him coming – down your throat, or in your hand, spurting thick cum on the tiled wall of his shower – for a while now. “I want to play fair,” he whispers, his lips barely brushing against yours before he presses a light kiss to the corner of your mouth.

You think you feel his heartbeat where his fingertips press into the sides of your face. It’s fast and strong, burning with the same desperate want you feel for him, but you have no clue whether that’s just you. You and the effect he has on your whole system.

“But it’s so fucking hard.”

There it is again, one of his innuendos that bring pictures to your mind. The first time you had a feel of his erection in that dressing room in Chicago, when his fingers had been brushing exactly that spot inside you while his mouth pressed kisses to the side of your neck, sultry voice whispering the nastiest things into your ear. That night in Atlanta, when you made out in your room, right in his lap, his hips leisurely rutting up into yours and cutting your breath short. Two weeks ago in his shower, your naked body pressed against his back, your hand wrapped around his dick and his hand wrapped around yours, guiding your movements as his moans made your pussy clench and your clit throb and you thought you’d come right then and there, untouched, when he whimpered at your touch over the head of his cock.

You wonder whether that’s just you – you and this unexpected obsession you seemingly have for his dick, the way it’s been driving you crazy since things started getting steamy between the two of you. You wonder whether that’s just you or him, too, but all you can do is stand there, putting all of your trust in your knees despite the fact that they feel weaker than jelly with the way he’s kissing – hopefully not marking – down your neck, one of his hands still cradling the side of your face and the other one slipping down to your backside, both to keep you up and push you closer into him.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he eventually continues, pecking your lips and staring back into your hazy eyes.

Maybe it’s not just you, you realize with a gasp when you manage to get a grip on yourself and feel the way he’s pressing right against you inside his pants. Maybe it’s him, too, and it thrills you to think that. To think he craves you just as much as you do him.

“All day every day.” His lips move against yours, and his eyes close for a moment when your hands trail up his back. You want to believe that’s because he needs a moment to collect and ground himself. You want to believe you have the same effect on him as he does on you – like your brain stops working and your body takes over, and your heart is so fast and loud in your chest that you can barely even hear or feel the outside world. “Every. Fucking. Day.”

He takes your bottom lip between his and gently pulls on it. When he opens his eyes again, you can see just how heated his gaze is.

“Even when I saw you there with him,” he groans, staring down at you. There’s this duality to him – it’s in the way his right hand fondles your buttcheek, giving you just a glimpse of his strength, and in the way his left hand cradles your face, like you’re something precious he wants to shield from damage. It makes your head spin, your lips tingling to just press against his and kiss him again. “When I feared it was a date. I still wanted you then anyway. You make me go crazy.”

You make me go crazy, too – you think you say those words out loud, but they don’t actually leave the confines of your mind. They’re stuck in there, as your brain fights with your body to work but ultimately fails.

“I can still taste you in my mouth.” He breathes you in right after he speaks. His nose trails up the side of your neck, and for a moment he stands there like that, eyes closed, lips pressed against the side of your head, half on your skin and half on your hair. “When I close my eyes, I see you sprawled out on my couch that night, dripping wet. I see you and hear you and feel you. I still fucking taste you on my tongue.”

You can’t hold back the gasp that leaves your lips as your knees grow weaker and your hands bunch his sweater up into your fists. “Fuck,” you whisper, and it’s then that he moves his head, smirks at you, and kisses you, lets his tongue glide over your bottom lip as you swear your heart is about to leave your chest. “Joong-gil,” you whine, breathless, and there are very few other thoughts in your now almost empty head. It’s all full of him. You’re all full of him in every single way but the physical one. “Fuck me.”

He kisses you again, tastes the remnants of the somaek you had at Jumadeung. His left hand leaves your face and joins his other one on your ass, and for a moment he’s content to just stand like that, kissing you, fondling your backside in his hands before pulling you into him. The lack of any sort of space between your bodies gets to your head, deepens your breathing, and whatever thinking ability your brain still has is immediately incinerated by the feel of him, hard and aching in his black jeans.

You’re back in Chicago, and in Atlanta, and on your knees in front of him, and in his shower behind him. You can barely breathe.

“No.” You can barely comprehend him when he pulls back to give your plea an answer.

“No?”

You want to ask what he means. Does he not want you? Is the memory of his mouth on your pussy better than the idea of having a repeat? But then he hums, smiling, and his hands come up to cup your face again. Neither of you moves, however; neither of you wants to lose the contact your lower bodies have.

“No,” he repeats. “We agreed on it, don’t you remember?” He pecks your lips, and then stamps kiss after kiss along your jawline until he’s playfully nibbling your earlobe, playing with your piercings. “Anything but my dick inside you.” He marks his words with a roll of his hips into yours that further sends your brain into overdrive. “It was your idea, have you forgotten? Wait until you’re free in November so that I can take you on every surface of both our apartments until we can barely feel anything else…”

You can feel the smirk in his voice, the cheeky bastard, but all you can manage is a desperate whine as you press your thighs together. “I don’t always have smart ideas,” you complain. Your heart is so strong in your chest that you can physically feel it beat against your ribcage.

“Why? It’s a fun little game,” he hums, pulling you along with him when he takes two steps backward to sit down on your couch with you in his lap. You want to tell him you’ll cry now that you’re pretty much sitting on his dick, but there’s no need to because those tears of frustration gather up in your eyes nonetheless. “It keeps me on edge.”

A chuckle bubbles up his throat when he picks up on you slowly rolling your hips into his, and his gaze trails down to where you’re sitting on top of him. He thrusts up into you once before grabbing a hold of your hips and guiding your movements, slowing them down when you get impatient.

“Is this mine?” he asks then, when he relaxes against the back of your couch and tugs at the hoodie you’re wearing.

You want to tell him that every single part of you is his, but then you remember what you’re still wearing and you hum against his lips – why is he so controlled when you barely know how to breathe or whether you’re still doing it right?

“Can I take it off?” He has one hand underneath it already, teasing up your spine and then moving back down.

“Please.”

He pulls it off of you with the t-shirt you’ve been wearing underneath, and then looks up into your eyes before unclasping your bra. You swear you’re hotter than the sun, and then that you’re even hotter when he drops your bra to the side and leans forward to press a wet kiss between your tits. His gesture pulls this embarrassing whimper out of you that makes you want to hide your face in the crook of his neck, but you can’t even move, not when his tongue comes out to lick one of your nipples before he gives it a suck.

“I want us to come like this,” he says against your chest right as he’s kissing marks into your skin where no one else is going to see them.

“I want you,” you complain. You inside me, any which way and anywhere you want me.

“You have me.”

God, he’s so infuriatingly stubborn, and handsome, his head leaning back and his hands pawing at your breasts, his jeans and your light pants an annoying barrier between the two of you.

“Not really though…”

He wipes your pout away when he bucks his hips up. “You said we’d wait until your schedule cleared up to fuck,” he reminds you for the second time, although it’s hard for your brain to process his words because then his mouth is back on your chest. “That’s what we’re gonna do. Because honestly,” he groans, bucking up again and making you moan loudly at the friction, “I won’t be able to stop once I finally have you.”

Another breathless fuck slips past your lips. Have you ever felt this hot? Has your heart ever beat this hard? You’re throbbing right against him, and you vaguely feel him twitch, and maybe by now you’ve soaked your way through your panties but really, it’s hard to concretely feel anything with certainty right now.

“Really?” you pant. You’re somehow so close – you’re tingling, and the coil in your belly is about to snap, and his mouth on your boob is hot and wet and you want it to stay there forever.

“Fuck, yeah,” he moans, pulling you flush against him and kissing you. “I won’t be able to walk for a while after that. Neither of us will be,” he chuckles, breathless, voice more gravelly than ever.

Somehow, you end up pulling his sweater off. Goosebumps wash over his flushed skin when it comes into contact with the cooler air of your living room. Your thumbs brush over his nipples, and you see the way he bites his lower lip before mumbling something about how you feel even better than what he pictures at night.

For a split second, you picture him in his apartment – on his couch, or on his bed, or even in his shower. The way he’d tug on his cock to the thought of you – of your body, the way you moan or whimper out his name, the way you came that night on his couch or in America. The way he’d moan and make himself come, spurt after spurt of white painting his hand or his abdomen or even his shirt.

Man, you’re fucked.

“It’s like you’re riding me,” he says, snatching you out of your open-eyed dream. He meets every single one of the rolls of your hips into his now, his hands on your hips and then up your spine until you’re moaning incoherently against his mouth.

“I’m so fucking empty,” is what you complain when you feel the way you’re clenching around nothing, throbbing, burning for something he’s not giving you. You can feel how sweaty your legs are in your pants, the way the cotton of your pants sticks to the back of your knees.

“I’ll make it worth the wait,” he promises in-between grunts.

Fuck – you think – is he really gonna come in his pants? But you don’t have time to dwell on your thoughts: his lips wrap around one of your nipples as his hand comes up to play with the other. A few perfectly-placed tugs on them, a few perfectly-angled thrusts of his hips up into yours, his clothed erection brushing against your core, and you feel yourself unravel and come undone.

Your moans are loud and whiny, embarrassed, and when Joong-gil leans back to pull you flush against his chest and hides his face in the crook of your neck to muffle his own moans, gooseflesh breaks out on your back and arms. You barely have the time to faintly see your reflection in the glass window of the oven in your kitchen right opposite you. He groans your name, and then he’s coming right underneath you, twitching against you, right inside his jeans.

When you wake up the morning after, you’re alone. The side of your bed Joong-gil slept in is cold, but his scent still lingers on the linen. You find yourself inhaling what’s left of his scent, that cold shadow of him, and the smile that stretches on your lips is so wide it hurts your cheeks.

Fuck. That’s when you realize that you’re down bad. That there is no coming back, the turning point is already miles behind you. Not even Ryung-gu has ever made you feel like this. Like you might combust on the spot because of how giddy you are, like this happiness you have inside is almost too much to be contained, even though he left without a word or a caress.

Bit by bit, memories of last night come back to your mind – Jumadeung with Joon-woong, and the ride on Joong-gil’s bike, and then the ride on his lap, right there in your living room. Even without having to leave your bed just yet to find confirmation, you know you won’t be able to stop seeing him whenever you’ll be resting on your couch – his skin, and his gaze, his lips wrapped around a pebbled nipple, and his hands on your bare back…

You giggle out loud, into the pillow he slept with, and you have to do your best to restrain yourself from running to Bit-na – or, well, to your chat with her – to just vent it all out of your system so that you can go back to being the sanest version of yourself – or what of that you can manage after Park Joong-gil came along and scorched everything else on his path. Hadn’t you listened to her when she told you to let things happen, who knows where you and Joong-gil would be now. What you would be.

Eventually, after much debating on whether you should just ditch your appointments for the day, you drag yourself into the living area of your apartment. Not looking at your sofa is almost a feat, but when you make it to the kitchen, the surprise of having your breakfast waiting for you on the table is enough to make you forget about everything else – what you did on the couch last night and the fact that you woke up alone. Part of you hoped you’d find Joong-gil somewhere in your house – maybe in the bathroom taking a shower, or going over his schedule at your kitchen table, somehow waiting for you to discuss what you knew you still have to talk about. The realization that he’s clearly not still here hits you like a pang in the heart that’s only slightly dulled by the food he’s made you.

I made you something to survive the day. Your gimbap is in the box on the counter. If you want, and whenever you want, you can tell me why yesterday was such a shitty day. No burden is too shitty to be shared x — pjg

Why is it that whatever he does, he still manages to make you feel all warm and giddy inside? Why is it that he’s so nice and kind, and also scorching hot and teasing? He gives you whiplash in the best way possible, keeps you waiting on your toes as you hang from his very lips.

He’s still the king among all your other thoughts when you’re standing in the recording booth, singing the songs of your new album. Its concept eerily fits what your life feels like nowadays, like you’re strapped on a roller coaster ride that’s going up and down, and then looping backward before jumping forward at full speed. It’s a dull rendition of how crazy this year has been – the collaboration with the one and only Park Joong-gil, your friendships – deeper with the RMT guys and stronger with Bit-na, even with the physical distance between the two of you – the new business deals you’ve managed to sign, the brief acting opportunity waiting for you next year.

There’s this one song, the very first track of your album, that feels like the wind in your face on that roller coaster.

Butterflies.

It came to you last, all at once while sitting in your car late at night, on one of those days when the sky feels starless, and that’s probably why you ended up putting it before all the others. It’s like that’s always been your starting point, what really pushed you to be where you’re standing now. It’s all the paper butterflies on the shelves in your living room and the one on your wrist put together, combined and condensed and pressurized into this knot that’s always at the back of your throat and that you’re finally ready – although still with some fears – to let go.

You record it last, however. It’s the heaviest of them all, after all, even if it somehow makes you feel so much lighter. It tastes like dried salt after a day at the beach, catching crabs with your father. It’s him flying your kite so up high you can pretend it’s a bird or even a dragon, and it’s you sitting on his shoulders so that you can make it fly even higher. It’s picnics by the sea, and nostalgic ballads after sunset, when he used to strum his guitar and pretend like he had followed his dream instead of that of his parents, with your mother dancing barefoot in the sand for the both of you.

And it’s you saying, You flew away, but can’t you see it? Can’t you see I followed the path you dreamed of?

You’re standing on the rooftop of the studio during your lunch break, right next to where you sat just yesterday with Joon-woong, your lunchbox with Joong-gil’s gimbap resting by your elbow as you look down at the street. The tears you thought would come still have to show up, but that stubborn knot at the back of your throat chokes you up nonetheless.

The same kind of questions that made you wonder about Park Joong-gil this morning come back once again. Where would you be, had your father stayed? Who would you be? Who would he be?

You ask yourself that, and you think about your mother, back in Busan alone, who lost the love of her life to something she couldn’t defeat for him herself. Had he stayed, would it still hurt – for you to see her and for her to see you?

It’s so cliché, that monarch butterfly blinking at you from a poster at the bus stop down at the corner, advertising some special event in collaboration with the butterfly park in Incheon. It makes a chuckle slip past your lips.

Did your biology-enthusiast father bring you there before your family moved down south? You really don’t remember anymore, although you do wonder when butterflies started carrying this kind of importance – and why. Why was metamorphosis so important when sometimes it’s just so hard to leave the safety of your cocoon. When you reach the stars but still have someone else plan and organize your life.

You switch on your phone when you sit down on the worn-out wooden bench to eat your lunch. Maybe if you can distract yourself enough, today’s recording session will fade quicker so that you can go home and start thinking about what you can do tomorrow to enjoy one of the very few free days on your schedule.

It’s then that all the missed messages and calls start coming in.

A couple of confused texts from your mother.

Half a billion texts and three missed calls from Bit-na.

An unexpected invitation to a group chat with Ryung-gu, Joon-woong, and Ryeon.

And then a link and a Let me know when I can call you by Joong-gil that somehow makes your heart jump up into your throat and almost choke on the last of his gimbap.

At first, you brush it off as just another dating scandal based on nothing, just like the one you barely had the time to confront yourself with when you first started working with Park Joong-gil. But then you force yourself to truly read and process the article’s words, and you jump back up to the title – RMT bassist Choi Joon-woong and solo singer Y/N dating.

There’s a picture of you and Joon-woong at the top of the page, and you recognize yourself from last night, when he drove the both of you to Jumadeung in his car. One unpondered decision and you end up trending online without even knowing.

That’s weird, you tell yourself – it’s just some random rumor, so why all this fuss in your messages? – until you scroll further down and read the statement the PR team of your agency released early that morning.

“We confirm that both our artists, Joon-woong and Y/N, are in the early stages of dating. We apologize to the fans who were surprised by this news, but ask for support as they grow together as a couple.”

You barely register the comments underneath the article and you definitely don’t dare open any of your social media apps because despite having muted notifications from anyone but the people close to you, seeing the drama that is most likely unfolding there will do your state of mind more harm than good.

“It’s all the agency’s doing,” is what Choi Joon-woong tells you through the speakers of your car as you’re headed to your agency’s building on the other side of the city, cruising through traffic at a faster speed than what your manager Ji-young would like.

You were supposed to have a chill night: order some food, and then sip on tea while watching that new drama you’ve been dying to start after Bit-na raved so much about it. Now it feels like you’re stuck in yet another bullet point on your schedule, written down on one of those colorful post-it notes Ji-young taught you to use.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You know you shouldn’t be mad at him – and you aren’t! Really! You probably won’t ever be, but there’s this turmoil in the pit of your stomach that makes you want to cry and scream and kick everything to the curb. Things were going well; you were opening up more; you found someone you realized you’d love to have by your side for however much time you’re given. And this feels like you’re being stabbed in your back by someone – something – you never thought would.

“It’s not that I didn’t,” Joon-woong replies with a sigh. You hear movement on his side of the line, hushed voices, and then a door clicking shut. “It’s that I couldn’t. When I woke up hungover this morning, the damage was already done. I’m at the agency now, I think you should—”

“Yeah, I’m coming as fast as I can.”

It’s nothing to worry about. No big deal at all. You spend the rest of those endless thirty minutes behind the wheel trying to convince yourself of that. But the truth is that all you can think about is Park Joong-gil. Last night with him. The food he left for you on your kitchen counter. That Let me know when I can call you in your text messages and to which you still haven’t replied.

The super in the hall of your agency’s building tries to stop you, or at least slow you down, when you march through the automatic doors, but you barely pay him any mind. Not him, and not the murmur that goes off when you get out of the elevator and walk down the corridor headed to the Public Relations office.

Everything inside you is just so deafening. Your heartbeat, your blood flow, all those thoughts pounding against the walls of your mind. You’ve had a few dating rumors to your name, but none has ever been confirmed, least of all by your own agency. It’s like you’ve been thrown a pair of dance shoes and now you’re expected to know how to ball dance out of the blue.

So blinded by all the worries swirling around in your head, you almost stumble backward when Ryung-gu catches you by your elbow mid-stride.

“Let’s not add a murder scandal to today’s list of nuisances,” he mutters into your ear as he steers you away and towards the meeting room.

“I was not—”

“Tell that to the secretary who was about to call security on you.”

“What? I have every right to be pissed off and demand explanations!” Everyone and their mother probably hear you all the way down the hall and to the elevators, but at the moment you don’t really care. You’ve kept your head down and worked hard ever since signing your exclusive contract, and never once complained about the mistreatment of your training years because you knew your hard work would eventually pay off.

“You won’t like what they have to say,” Joon-woong says when he pulls you into the meeting room.

Ryung-gu is quick to enter the room after you, and then Ryeon pushes the door shut before pressing herself against the privacy glass. The look on her face is apologetic, and the fact that you’ve never seen her this way confuses you even more. Your anger and annoyance quickly sizzle off of your shoulders and you’re left there, with Joon-woong’s hand still loosely wrapped around your right wrist, wondering whether you’re getting fired or used as a scapegoat before your career is finally sacrificed towards some obscure greater good.

“You should probably sit,” Ryeon says, forcing a smile and pointing at the nearest chair.

You do as you’re told, partly because you want this to be over with, and partly because all the what if’s crowding your thoughts won’t leave you alone otherwise – what if everything goes downhill. What if your friendship with Joon-woong gets tarnished. What if what you have with Joong-gil – and what you could have – goes to shit. What if the fans retaliate against you and your career becomes a horror story that will help make public relationships in the industry even more taboo.

Joon-woong sits down in the chair to your left, and Ryung-gu and Ryeon move to the other side of the table, away from the fury you might unleash. No one’s ever seen you truly mad, but nothing’s ever really happened to make you furious, so you reason they’d rather be safe than sorry.

“You know how your collab with the Park Joong-gil had a ripple effect that increased all of our sales,” Joon-woong starts, and you turn to look at him. He’s staring down at his hands on the metal surface of the table and suddenly it’s so clear in your mind, the reason why your agency and their PR team came up with that lie.

It’s always money, isn’t it?

“Everyone’s liked the two of you together since day one,” he continues.

“I’ve seen the shipping comments,” you interrupt. “Get to the point.”

The point is that everyone’s always hungry for something. Love. Money. Success. Fame. The macarons they sell in that tiny French bakery five minutes from your old house in Incheon. More juicy details about the private life of one of your idols, so that you can bask in the illusion of being able to get a peek behind the curtains that separate their public life from what goes on behind closed doors.

“Someone snapped a picture of us in the car going to Jumadeung last night, posted it online, and then rumors started coming up left and right. By the time the agency posted that statement early this morning, we had become the most searched names online.”

It’s almost like no one ever sleeps. Like they’re always watching you – through a spy cam installed inside a teddy bear you were gifted at a fan meet or behind the camera of some paparazzo.

“So what you’re trying to say is, they’re using us as a marketing strategy.” You look at Ryung-gu first, and then at Ryeon, and some of that anger comes back. It makes your fingertips tingle, and suddenly you’d rather be back in the recording booth, sobbing into the microphone because all you want to do now is tear wings off of fragile butterfly bodies.

Eventually, you turn to look at Joon-woong. He’s staring at you now, and he also does look more apologetic than you’ve ever seen him. You want to tell him it’s not his fault, that none of this is his doing, but then again would it really matter? This shitstorm didn’t only hit you; it also hit him, and that’s something you should keep in mind. You’re in this boat together and you should help each other steer it towards the nearest shore.

“They want us to play along for as long as we can,” he confirms. “I tried telling them we have our own personal stuff going on in our private lives, but they say it’s just part of the game. We signed with them, so now we have to keep on playing our part. The CEO saw the sales increase after your collab and your tour, and soon you’ll have your solo comeback, too. Our shows are also starting soon,” he adds, glancing at his bandmates.

“It’s bad to say, but we gotta ride the wave,” Ryung-gu grimaces.

Ryeon smiles. It feels genuine this time, although you see the look in her eyes. Distant, and glossed over, almost as though it’s trying to say that soon it’ll be over. “You should both hang in there. Play along until they say you can break up.”

“With a bit of luck, it’ll all fade away quickly,” Ryung-gu agrees.

You sigh, leaning your head forward and resting your forehead on the back of one hand. Maybe the idea of going to Jumadeung wasn’t that great, after all. Maybe you should’ve called Ji-young, asked her to take you there with your van – through the black tinted windows no one would have been able to snap any kind of picture.

“I know you said you and Joong-gil—”

You’re trying to shake your head without being too obvious, but when Joon-woong doesn’t pick up and starts mentioning last night’s conversation at Jumadeung, you lightly kick his foot under the table.

You want to say nothing’s been defined yet, but you also know that would be a lie. You and Joong-gil talked last night – probably not about everything you would have wanted, but definitely enough to know he’s yours and you’re his.

“Why—”

“If you’re worried about me,” Ryeon cuts in, stretching an arm out across the table and grabbing your hand, “it’s alright. I would have to be blind not to pick up on something going on between the two of you. I know he told you about us.” She shrugs. “Had we been meant to be, we would still be together, but that wasn’t in the books for us. I wanted things he couldn’t give, and he wanted things I couldn’t give. I’m glad he found the right match.”

You’re sitting behind the wheel of your car at a red light much later that night. After everyone with some importance in the agency sacrificed Joon-woong and the rest of the RMT to give you the heads up, the CEO, the legal advisor, and the PR and marketing teams walked in for a briefing meeting.

Do this. Do that. Make sure you’re seen out together. We already have brand gigs scheduled up for the two of you. This is gonna be the best year ever for us!

It shouldn’t be a surprise, you tell yourself, looking at the incoming traffic on the other lane. While you’re an employed worker there, you’re also one of their main money-makers. You produce music, and your music attracts fans, who, consequently, buy your merch, come to your concerts and shows, and are one of the reasons why you end up on TV or on the radio or get featured in YouTube videos uploaded by official channels.

You’ve always been money to them and it should have been expected that you’d always be.

It’s just that…

Your eyes well up with tears of annoyance, and you angrily wipe them away with the back of your hand.

It’s just so unfair. To you, and to Joon-woong, and everyone who��s going to fall for this stunt. To your mother, who’s going to want to know more, and to Joong-gil, who’s been living rent-free in your mind and then probably in your heart as well for so many months now.

You don’t even remember when you put that selfie you took with him as your phone’s wallpaper. No more paper butterflies in favor of a happy memory – you and the guy you’ve been crushing so hard on, making peace signs and grinning in your mother’s living room that one time you visited her and asked Joong-gil to come with you.

There’s no use in running away from his text message anymore. What puts your mind to rest is the knowledge that he’s in the exact same industry as you and that, if anything, he should be able to understand you and the situation you now find yourself in much better than many other people.

Without thinking too much about whether you should be doing it or not, you pull up his contact and press the call button.

He picks up on the second ring, just as the traffic light turns green and you can start moving again.

“Sorry it’s taken me the whole day to call you,” you blurt out before he even has the time to say a word. Now that you’re on a call with him, you worry he won’t want to listen to what you have to say. You worry that he might misread the situation, see stuff that really isn’t there, and hang up on you, never to be seen again.

Why do you worry so much about being wanted by him in more ways than one? Why do you want him to understand you and what you can’t yet say? You want to allow yourself to give an answer to those questions, but there’s a part of you, deep down inside, that just doesn’t want to risk ending up heartbroken.

“I turned my phone off because I was recording the new album’s tracks and when I saw the news, I went straight to my agency to see what the fu—” You cut yourself off. There’s no use getting pissed again, you realize with a sigh. “To see what was happening.”

“Are you alright?”

His question catches you off guard. Out of all the things he could have hit you with, he went with that.

“I’m…” You turn left at the intersection and then heave a sigh of relief when you see the metro station getting closer and closer, the sign that very soon you’ll be home. “I mean, I’m not that pissed anymore, but…”

“What’s going on?”

“They’re using me and Joon-woong as a marketing stunt,” you confess just as you turn into the underground garage of your condominium. There, you said it. It doesn’t feel as unbearable anymore, even though Joong-gil is dead silent at the other end of the phone call.

“So it’s not real?”

You frown. “Of course it’s not. I thought I made it clear last night?” It comes off as a question – you really did think you had been explicit enough, but then again, everything is subjective and he might have perceived it differently.

“Just making completely sure.” You don’t need to see him to hear the grin in his voice when he speaks this time, and it eases a weight off of your chest you didn’t even know had settled there. “Do you want to come over?”

You’re sincere when you reply, “I just got home. I think I’m too tired to drive around again right now.”

“Do you want me to come over, then?”

Yes! You want to tell him that, but you also, “don’t wanna be selfish by asking you to come.”

“Script reading can wait. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

Waiting for Joong-gil to ring at your doorbell gives you enough time to take a long shower to wash away any memory of butterflies, the recording session (that went smoothly, despite what you feared), and most importantly, the news that you’re – apparently – in a relationship with one of your closest friends. And it’s then, under the scalding hot stream of the shower, that Joong-gil’s words come crawling back and you realize he’s ditching work to come to see you.

It makes you feel a new kind of warm inside, like you have flowers blooming in your chest in a sudden bout of spring in the middle of October. It empties your mind completely and leaves you standing there, grinning at nothing but the mental picture of the man you are – again, apparently – head over heels for.

For a moment there’s no more fake dating Joon-woong, no more marketing stunts your agency’s employing to line its pockets with even more money, no more comments online talking about you or the picture someone snapped last night. There’s just you, in the shower, and then Joong-gil, and you realize – probably a moment too late, although it still shouldn’t come as a surprise – that your feelings have been growing even when you were trying to ignore them, and now they’re there, somewhere in your chest, in-between those flowers growing in your lungs and spreading down to your belly. And you have no clue what they mean, what they are, but you’re so grateful for them and for how alive they’re making you feel.

You’re on the phone with your mother – you reassure her that everything’s fine, that you will introduce Joon-woong to her, but that she has nothing to worry about and that no, nothing’s wrong between you and the ‘handsome man’ you introduced to her months ago – when you get a text from security making sure you indeed are waiting for someone.

“I will explain everything as soon as I can,” you promise her before bidding her goodnight.

Maybe if you could meet her in person, she would be able to reassure you that everything is going to be just fine and that there’s no need for your heart to beat this fast now that Park Joong-gil is riding the elevator to your floor. It’s like all of a sudden, those flower stems are constricting your airways, squeezing everything inside you like someone found a way to shove their fist into your chest.

You force yourself out of those mounting fears – what did the two of you talk about last night? What did you tell him, and what did he tell you? How clear were you? – and you open the entrance door just in time to see him step out of the elevator at the other end of the corridor.

He’s as gorgeous as ever, even when it’s clear that he’s simply thrown a jacket over his pajamas and put on the first pair of running shoes he found on the rack by his door before grabbing his helmet and heading down to his garage.

He strides up to you and for a moment he simply stands there, looking down into your eyes, his breathing short, almost as though he ran as much and as fast as he could before slipping into the elevator. When he doesn’t say anything, you want to ask him whether he is mad, and that’s exactly when you realize you actually are afraid he might be. You can take a lot of shit, but apparently, you can’t take Park Joong-gil being mad at you.

But then he’s enveloping you into a hug. He smells like the night, and his coat is cold against your cheek when you lean into him. You want to stay here like this forever – or for however long that could be in real life and not just inside the fantasy world in your head – but then you think about the neighbor you share your floor with and how she could step outside at any given time. If another rumor came out of it, you don’t want to imagine what your agency might come up with. So, you wrap your arms tighter around Joong-gil and step back inside your apartment enough for him to be able to kick the door shut.

“Hey,” he whispers against the side of your face after another – apparently endless – moment of silence.

Your nodding into the crook of his neck makes him chuckle, and then his lips come down to your cheek to press a kiss into your skin that makes you sigh out loud.

Eventually, you let go of him long enough for him to be able to take his jacket and his shoes off before leading him straight to your bedroom. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show – or you’re just so dead set on spending time with him that you don’t notice. Only when you’re in the safety of your blankets and Joong-gil’s arms do you allow yourself to relax and gaze up at him.

“I’m so pissed,” you confess bluntly. Were he anyone else, his chuckle would worsen your annoyance, but he’s not just anyone and all you find yourself doing is hide your face in the crook of his neck like you just want to rest on him forever.

“I know,” he murmurs. You feel the ghost of a kiss against your hair, just before his arms tighten their embrace around you, pulling you closer to him and his scent. “I was planning the right way to ask you to be unofficially official, but your agency beat me to that.”

“I’ve always liked them and while of course I know they hired me so that we both could make money, I never would have im—” You stop in your tracks, frowning, your brain finally catching up with what he really said – not a they’re real pieces of shit but something entirely different. “You… What?”

You can’t look up at him. You simply look down at his chest, at how it rises and falls with every regular breath of his, and when you move your hand up higher, you feel his heartbeat underneath your fingers. Flowers and butterflies coexist in your belly, and you feel like you might explode in a billion, bright fireworks.

Joong-gil hums, one of his hands moving away from your back to join the one you have on his chest. His palm against the back of your hand, his fingers intertwine themselves with yours. “Yeah, I don’t see why we should wait.” His voice is low, not as stable as it usually is, and you feel his heart pick up its pace inside his chest. You wonder how fast your own is – and why it even is this fast in the first place when it’s been clear for a while how you feel even just about the thought of him. “We both like each other. We both want to spend time together. I can be yours, and you can be mine.”

You pause for a moment and draw your head back on his shoulder just enough to be able to look at him. There’s no trace of playfulness on his face; the smile that stretches on his lips looks just as genuine as ever. “Did you read the articles online? Did you understand when I said my agency is using me and Joon-woong for marketing?”

“I heard you loud and clear when you said the relationship was fake, yeah,” he grins. The fingers of his left hand play along the skin of your low back, underneath your pajama shirt, and his other hand comes up to cradle the side of your face. It makes you want to kiss him for hours on end, to let him take your breath away – just stay here with him and let your feelings blossom together. “You’re bound to fake-break up at some point.”

“You’d… make us official? Even when your agency’s against you dating?”

You want that. You want him. Life has no certainties and you try not to believe in absolutes, but you do know you don’t want him out of your life. You want to walk hand in hand with him until the end of the road, wherever and whenever that might be, even if sometimes it still does feel rushed.

“If you’d like that, too,” he hums, his thumb brushing along your cheek. “I told you I want to spend a long time with you. I meant it. Still do.”

You swat at his chest and your head finds its place back in the crook of his neck. He still feels you grinning against his skin, however, and it makes him laugh. But then you nod, and after pressing a light kiss against his neck, you say, “Let’s do it then.”

He maneuvers you so that you’re lying on your back and then he’s gazing down at you, one elbow by your head keeping his weight propped up. “Yeah?” His eyes stare into yours and you find yourself swallowing around nothing, looking up at him – he didn’t even need to kiss you to make you feel breathless.

“Yeah.”

“So can I be mean with Joon-woong for fake-dating my very real girlfriend?” He’s grinning, so you know he’s just joking, but it’s that last word that brings all the warmth to your face and then back down into your chest, until it’s seeping into every single fiber of your being.

It makes you chuckle. “Don’t you dare.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No!” you laugh, trying to sit up, but then he gently pushes you back down. “He’s a good friend.”

“We’d better get matching rings so that he doesn’t get the wrong ideas, then.”

You exclaim his name, laughing at his antics, at how playful he feels right at this moment. It’s another one of those shards of him that seeps into your heart and your soul, like you know you’ll want to remember this moment for a very, very long time. “Can’t believe you’re jealous,” you grin, both of your hands coming up to cup his face before pulling him down low enough for you to peck his lips.

“I’m not jealous,” he shrugs, “just a bit territorial,” he corrects, bumping his nose into yours.

You chuckle, and it’s almost right against his lips. “Didn’t you have a script to read?”

“Nah, I think I’m just gonna spend the night with my girlfriend,” he says before kissing you. His tongue slips into your mouth when you gasp at the feeling of his touch between your legs. “Can I?”

You nod, lifting your butt for a moment to allow him to take your pajama pants off. “I feel like I’ll never survive till my schedule’s clear,” you breathe, voice unsteady, when he positions himself between your legs with a grin on his face.

“Do I have that effect on you?” He wraps one of your legs around his waist, and with how close he is to your core, you can feel his cock growing harder right against you. When you let out a soft moan, he grabs your other leg just to bring it up as well. “Do I make you lose your mind as well?” he asks, fully confident, rocking his hips against yours.

“Fuck, yes,” you whisper, cupping his face to bring him in for a kiss.

You could barely recount how you went from that to Joong-gil lying on his stomach between your legs, three fingers knuckle-deep inside your quivering pussy, his own hips slowly rutting into the mattress, as he brings you closer and closer to your third orgasm. You know for a fact that he’s come once already as well, untouched, and even just trying to guess in what amount you affect him makes you clench around his fingers as he sucks on your clit.

He grunts into you when you tug on his hair, after a brush against a particular spot inside you makes your oversensitivity spike through the roof.

“I’m gonna come,” you whisper, barely able to put the ceiling of your bedroom into focus as all you can think about is being filled by something other than his fingers. Even just the thought that his couple ring is coated in your slick is making your head spin and the knot in your abdomen tighten.

“I’ve got you,” is all he says before flicking the underside of your clit and pressing a wet kiss just below your navel.

His fingers curl up, tips pressing right into that spongy spot that makes your synapses lighten up that tad bit more, and then he’s back to teasing your clitoris until you come again, making a mess of his face and the sheets below you.

You’re still shivering when he comes up to kiss you, and your own taste on his tongue makes you whine into his mouth as your legs wrap around his waist. He hisses when his clothed erection comes into contact with your throbbing, wet core, but then he’s rutting into you as you make out and everything else vanishes, drown out by his moans and whimpers and gasps against your lips and the sparks flying underneath your skin.

Once you manage to swallow the sense of guilt you feel at faking something in front of everyone just for the sake of your agency’s revenue, it’s not that hard to play the part. You carry out the even more extra gigs both your and Joon-woong’s team take on, and you make sure the two of you are caught by paps when you’re out on fake dates or simply moving from one place to the other with either of your cars.

If you were busy before, you’re a little busier now.

After some additional recording for your album, you have to sit down at your kitchen table to answer the questions of a written interview they sent to your manager Ji-young all the way from the States.

After a day spent rehearsing your new choreographies – and after a day spent practicing for his comeback with Ryung-gu and Ryeon – you and Joon-woong have to take a stroll by the Han River, hand in hand, doing your best not to fall asleep on your feet.

It’s like working overtime in a period when you’re already putting in extra hours, but the agency’s proud of how the both of you are handling the hot potato they threw at your faces. They’re happy with how much popularity they are getting and how far up the charts both you and the RMT group are climbing. Not only that; the two of you have become a hot topic and it’s become hard to go anywhere online without seeing either or both of your names trending.

That’s how your mother and Bit-na find you when they drag themselves to Seoul at the end of October: an overanalyzed talk of the town.

“This feels like something that’d happen only in dramas!” Bit-na gasps after you finish filling her in on this charade you and your friend Joon-woong are playing. “Can they really do that?”

You shrug your shoulders. “No clue. But it’s only temporary, so Joon-woong and I are cooperating. We’ll probably break this off sometime after his comeback.”

From where you’re sitting on the couch, you can feel your mother’s gaze on you from where she’s standing in the kitchen, making the three of you soup. She’s been quiet all day – with her bad motion sickness, she’s never been particularly fond of long car drives, and she’s also been privy to this whole story since it started almost three weeks ago.

Bit-na’s playing with one of your butterflies while inspecting every single one of the ornaments on your shelves after having spent years looking at them through the screen of her computer. The tiny lighthouse she sent you as a gift for your debut is still there and you change its batteries every time they run out. You see her pick it up for a moment just as you get up to walk up to her.

“I didn’t think you still had this,” she mutters when you come to a stop by her side.

A chuckle slips past your lips and you carefully take the paper butterfly from her hands before replying, “why not? It’s a reminder there’s always a light in my life.”

“We’ve been friends for ages, don’t start making me tear up now,” Bit-na whines, pushing your shoulder and muttering an o my gosh underneath her breath before linking her arm with yours. “You know, I think you’re brave for doing this.”

“Doing what?” You glance at her side profile as she’s still focused on that tiny lighthouse. You think of her as one: always guiding you in the right direction when you’re lost in the fog and the darkness.

“Whatever they tell you to do.” She shrugs and then turns with a smirk, “or for wearing matching rings with a different guy from the one everybody believes you to be dating.”

There’s no concealing the grin that grows on your face, and you have to turn the other way to not let her see you beaming like that.

“When did he give it to you?” she asks from behind you, leaning her chin on your shoulder.

You tell her how you got those rings, after how clear Joong-gil made it that you’re now an item while still not breaking the rules of that little game you’ve been playing since that dinner date – although there’s really no need for Bit-na to know what transpired that night in your bed. Joon-woong made it clear that he doesn’t want to hinder your relationship with Joong-gil, and after a long discussion on this new marketing project carrying your faces, the three of you came to the conclusion that fuck it. If it comes out – that you and Park Joong-gil are seeing each other, that is – you’ll be able to pin the scandal to your agency wanting to control your lives even more and while that’s simply wishful thinking, you still did go to an actual jewelry store to handpick your couple rings. Maybe in the silly hope that someone would catch you, or that magically you and your friend would be able to go back to your normal.

Telling someone the truth about your phantom relationship with Choi Joon-woong really does end up serving its purpose of lifting a weight off of your chest, even when that someone is just your mother and your best friend from back home. It doesn’t make that feeling of being a fraud go away completely, but it does make it lighter to bear as you sit in the VIP section of the RMT’s first comeback show.

While you’ve always been a fan of theirs, this is mainly all for show, but no one has to know it, right? The people that matter already do: Ryeon and Ryung-gu are in on the secret, and Joong-gil has been wearing his matching ring ever since you gave it to him despite the fact that no one seems to have picked up on it yet. It feels like doing your best while still half-assing your way through an assignment at the same time: you’ll be on a video call with Joong-gil once you’re back home, while everyone else will be busy talking about the new pictures of you and Joon-woong tomorrow morning – and you know Bit-na will do a better job than your PR team at giving you a summary of what’s going on online about your relationship.

Things get louder in the audience when Joon-woong turns in your general direction during his ending fairy and shoots you a finger heart. It’s something Ryeon jokingly proposed a few days ago, while the four of you were chilling in Ryung-gu’s apartment watching the first episode of Tomorrow, that new show you and Joon-woong recorded those songs for – “Send Y/N a heart or something when the cameras zoom in on you,” but no one had really been serious about it.

Pictures of Joon-woong’s finger heart and of your reaction are everywhere when the shooting for your new music video comes to an end the day after and you finally get the chance to sit down in your van for a sip of water. You don’t even know why he’s apologizing in your chat for going through that playful plan when that’s exactly the kind of shit your agency wants in order to keep your names trending and their revenue coming in. You’re both in this together and as long as your higher-ups are going to keep the music going, both you and Joon-woong will have to keep on dancing.

“It makes me feel like shit that they’re forcing us to go through with this,” he says when you pick up his call. It’s sort of like a reversed repeat of your call with Joong-gil, when your agency’s statement came out and you spent half a day at the office being briefed on and fighting against this new plan of theirs. “I don’t have anything going on but you do, and I really don’t wanna ruin our friendship. What if this whole thing ends up straining it?”

Neither of you wants to worry out loud about something much scarier – what’s going to happen once you call this fake relationship off? What if the truth comes out and the public finds out it’s all been a play since the beginning? Despite it not being your fault, you still played your part, and the mere idea of losing everything the both of you have worked so hard and so many years for makes you nauseous.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” you try to reassure him, even though all those other concerns are still swirling around in your mind. “Everyone involved knows it’s all play pretend. And you also have feelings, so don’t only think about mine. Soon enough this will be over and—”

“I hope that day hurries up. If I have to kiss you for the cameras one more time, I swear I…” You hear him gag at the other end of the call, even when his words make you burst out laughing.

“Am I that bad of a kisser?”

“It’s almost like kissing my own sister and that’s not something I’d ever wanna do!”

More kissing has to happen to keep your agency fed, however. It’s like some new weird fetish for them: after the first peck on the lips you and Joon-woong exchanged while out on a walk after they told you to get back to number one in the trending charts after Joong-gil’s cameo in the new show Tomorrow dethroned you, it seems like that’s all they want to see online now. You both try to seem as genuine as possible when doing it, but it’s hard to swallow down how weird it feels, to be kissing someone you’ve pretty much spent a considerable part of your life growing up with and with no feelings whatsoever attached.

What keeps you going is the knowledge that it’ll be over soon – and maybe in the future, when your contract expires, you’ll be able to consider signing under another label in the hopes that they’d never use you like this.

However, the RMT’s comeback stages come and go, and there’s no sign that your agency will let you call this off. Even when your schedule clears and that mid-November you’ve been so ardently awaiting comes around, you and Joon-woong have a photoshoot for a brand publicizing couple apparel – matching clothes, matching jewelry, and a pair of matching rings dangerously similar to the ones you and Park Joong-gil have been seen wearing despite no connection having been made, strangely enough. It has still presented itself as an excuse for Joon-woong to start wearing one on a chain necklace around his neck, in case rumors came out before anyone was really ready to face the backlash.

Both of you wonder when that fateful day will come.

You’re together late at night, on your very last day of work before your break. You’ve been planning on going back to Busan – back home – for a while now. That tug-o-war game between the idea of going back and the prospect of staying in your Seoul apartment finally reached its final round when, two days ago, you finally booked your ticket. It’s about time you do this; it’s about time you go back home, to your mother – and to visit your father’s grave on the anniversary of his passing.

“Maybe after our tour is over…” Joon-woong sighs, pulling you out of your thoughts and pushing your backpack into the luggage rack of the train that will take you back home.

You’re both dressed so that no one will recognize you, and the fact that probably not many other people will travel first class on the last train of the day makes you heave a sigh of relief. “I sure hope so. I feel bad for everyone who’s fallen for this…”

Joon-woong nods. “Yeah, I hope this won’t end up biting us in the ass.”

Outside the train, a female voice announces the express train to Busan will leave in fifteen minutes, and for a moment everything else is silent.

Imagine we’re going on an adventure, you hear your father say. You’re seven years old, wearing a yellow coat that matches your varnish little shoes and a fluffy bunny backpack, your tiny hand holding tight onto your father’s index finger as your mother’s just a little further away, buying gimbap for you to eat on your first train ride. We get on the train here and we get off alllll the way at the other end of the country tomorrow morning.

Part of you – the version of you who will forever be seven years old – is still there, on the platform, and your father is crouched down next to you, pointing out a pigeon or that one old lady with the bright bouquet of bluebells sitting all alone on a bench. And the adult version of you is standing there, looking back on the memory like it’s a video clip on your computer, but a thousand times more vivid, a thousand times more real. You hear the chatter of the passengers waiting for their rides, the screeching of a train’s brakes, and your father’s coat still smells of laundry detergent and that wooden scent that’s always been him.

Suddenly, Joon-woong’s hand is on your shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Did tomorrow really have to come? Did you really have to wake up in Busan, in your mother’s embrace, and start a new life there?

“I’m fine.” But there’s this big, thorny lump in the back of your throat, and the butterfly on your wrist is pulling your whole right arm down, tugging and tugging like you used to tug on your father’s hand – to run on the beach, to show him something that caught your attention, to bring him out of his endless work.

“Are you sure?” You meet Joon-woong’s eyes and you’re this close to tearing up. When you went home last time, a few months ago, the world didn’t feel this heavy and constricting – was it the excitement of the end of the world tour? Was it Park Joong-gil’s hand in yours? Was it the fact that it was just a random day? “It’s probably not too late for me to get a ticket to come with you.”

The female voice over the speakers announces five more minutes until departure.

“I’ll be fine,” you say, plastering the best smile you can manage on your face and squeezing his hand. After the endless schedule he and his group mates just came out of, this is just for you to bear. “I’ll close my eyes and wake up in Busan. I’ll text when I’m there, okay?”

Joon-woong lets you go reluctantly, almost as though the part of him that wants to stay with you and avoid you going on your own just had a fight with the part of him that respects your will and lost. He waves at you from the platform when the train starts moving and doesn’t stop until you’re out of sight, and you do the same.

A tear breaches the dam of your lashes and trickles down your cheekbone and into the black face mask you’re wearing.

Is it Joon-woong waving goodbye to you that is making you cry? Or is it the memory of a pre-adolescent Y/N, staring wide-eyed at your father on a stainless-steel table as your mother wails on her knees?

Fifteen years pass in the blink of an eye, and when you look back, you have no clue what even happened in that span of time. What were you doing at fifteen? What were you doing at eighteen? Where were you when midnight struck on the first of January and you turned twenty with your friend Bit-na on the phone?

Fifteen years pass in the blink of an eye, and it’s overwhelming, how these emotions feel as they resurface within you, turning your stomach upside down, inside out. Did you not process them? What gives them the right to come back barreling in full force right now, when you’re moving forward one step at a time?

You squeeze your eyes shut, willing those painful tears to crawl back where they came from, but that simply makes swallowing that tad bit harder. Your hands ball up into fists on your lap.

When the train makes its first stop, you have half a mind to grab your backpack and get off the train, call a cab and go back to Seoul, crawl into your shower and sit there. But before you can give it too much thought, you doze off for a minute. Be it the exhaustion of the day or your body catching up with the fact that now you’re off the hook, you find yourself slipping into unconsciousness.

It’s just black, no pictures play out a dream in your mind. It’s just black and voices, first off in the distance and then closer and closer, until you can recognize the voice you had when you were six.

Daddy! Daddy! Look at this one – you’re giggling. You have no need for a clear dream to replay that day in your mind because your subconscious has memorized every single detail about it already. It’s the sixth of October: that day your mother dressed you in your favorite floral sweater over jean overalls before dropping you and your father off at the Butterfly Park on her way to work. You had your bunny backpack on, one hand wrapped securely in your father’s, braids that touched your shoulders, and a chubby little finger pointing at the caterpillar in the glass window. So big and striped!

Do you like it? – he’s beaming. You don’t need to see him now to remember the way he looked that day behind his reading glasses. He was reading on his guide what to that little kid felt like fascinating gibberish. He had this gift to himself: he could make anything sound like the most interesting thing, whether it was a fairytale or the air conditioner’s handbook, that one time he had to fix it during a heatwave.

He reads and reads, telling you everything about that one specific caterpillar you had pointed out in your childlike fascination, and then repeats his question. Do you like it?

The sound you make is everything between a yes, a no, a maybe, and an it’s really a funny little creature and I’m also a funny little creature, so how can I tell?

Then, there’s light. It’s as small as a pinhead, but it’s there, and it feels like it’s swirling with colors and sounds and emotions.

This is where butterflies come from – he’s picking you up. You still feel the ghost of his touch as he picks you up in his arms – the present-day you, and the six-year-old you at the Incheon Butterfly Park, with her bunny backpack and her tiny little braids and her jean overalls, eyes big and round as she looks at the pictures he’s showing her.

Worms, Daddy?

Caterpillars.

But how? You hear your surprised gasp. Your tiny arm wraps around the back of his neck, and with your tiny hand on his throat you can feel the vibrations of his voice when he speaks.

They live and grow and when they’re ready, they build themselves a cocoon.

Like when you put me to sleep? You always say you’re making a cocoon for me!

Exactly like when I put you to sleep – and he laughs. You realize now, in this dream-memory of sorts, that that’s one of the things you’ve missed the most about him. His voice, and the way he’d laugh. They also go to sleep in that cocoon. And then, while they’re sleeping, they go through a metamorphosis – and he says that word with emphasis, because he’s also always wanted for you to have your own. And when they wake up and they get out of their cocoons…

They’re butterflies!

They’re butterflies, indeed, Buttercup.

Will I also be a butterfly one day, Daddy? When I grow up enough?

You already are my butterfly – his smile was blinding that day and as you start to stir from unconsciousness now, you can feel tears prickling at your eyes, behind closed eyelids, because that little kid really did think she’d have her whole life with her daddy. My pretty yellow buttercup, just like this one.

It’s flitting about before your eyes, when you open them and a tear trickles down. It’s the same yellow buttercup your father showed you that morning, behind the glass of the window preventing you from touching the butterflies – or preventing them from flying away. You see it land on the headrest of the seat in front of yours like you’re on its side of the window cage, staring out at the reflection of what you and your father used to look like when you were six and he still seemed happy.

Then you blink and the last tendrils of slumber retreat. The butterfly, six-year-old you, and your father disappear.

You sit there for a long moment, chest heavy and throat closing up, and you wonder what would happen if you could go back in time, to that day, and relive every single day that came after with the knowledge you have now. Would things be different? Or would you still be on this very train, going back to your mother only?

You fidget for a moment – only inside though, it’s like your body can’t really move. What if you do and then you break? Or is this your cocoon, and you’re going through your own metamorphosis, waiting to become a different version of yourself once you make your way out of it? What colors will you have then? How high will you fly?

[9:58 PM] joong-gil 💗: have a safe trip. Call me when you’re home no matter the time x

Joong-gil called you before you left your apartment. He wanted to wish you a safe trip, but that didn’t stop him from also sending you that message – and from putting a smile on your face. He wanted to wish you a safe trip – and hear your voice, and make sure you were alright. He’s not the only one who knows you’re going back to Busan because of your father, but he’s definitely the one that knows the most about him out of the few close people you have in Seoul.

You debated asking him to come with you like you did last time, but then you backed out of it because you didn’t want to tear him away from his life the way you did the night he was supposed to go over his script. Now, in your heart, it feels like you shouldn’t have hesitated. It feels like you should have asked him – to hell with your agency and their marketing stunt, to hell with the way they’re using you and Joon-woong, to hell with everything else. Because there’s this sudden realization hitting you straight in the face like a fist that goes down your throat to grip and twist your insides: it’s the first time you’re going back home alone. No Joong-gil, no Ji-young, no accompanying Bit-na back home after she’s spent a week at your place in Seoul. It’s just you, and your backpack (not a bunny one), and all these feelings reawakening inside you like a beast rearing its head after a long slumber.

What is it about anniversaries that is so hard to swallow?

Your fingers hesitate on the screen of your phone. You enter and exit the messaging app, glimpses of your chat with Park Joong-gil and of the picture of the two of you that’s become your wallpaper. Glimpses of a memory that won’t mutate and glimpses of a conversation that can still go on – and back, and a billion other directions.

[2:37 AM] you: i wish i

[2:37 AM] you: …

[2:39 AM] you: are you sleeping?

[2:39 AM] you: …

[2:42 AM] you: what would hap

[2:42 AM] you: …

You type and delete, type and delete.

Your mother is offline when you leave your chat with Joong-gil and check. Of course she’s asleep, it couldn’t be any other way. She said she’d pick you up from the station when you’d get there, but you also know that after her shift at the hospital she should be recharging her batteries now.

You check on Bit-na. She’s changed her profile picture from a selfie of herself to one with a man, probably the Seung-min she mentioned when she came over, that one chef she’s met through a friend of a friend and that seems to be a really excellent and sweet guy.

Your father was a really excellent and sweet guy, too. He comes back full force, and you’re left there, wondering.

Is Bit-na really happy?

Is Seung-min?

Is your mother?

Is Joong-gil?

Are… you?

[3:01 AM] you: i thought i could do this on my own, but it’s so very hard. it hasn’t been just my mom and i in so long. i feel like i’m tearing apart at the seams

You send him that. He – Park Joong-gil. You send him that, after much debating, even more deleting and retyping, after wondering whether this is a burden you have the right to share with him. He is yours and you are his, but is everything else, too? Is that what it means, to love someone?

Your phone is almost back in your pocket – Joong-gil is sleeping, he won’t reply, he’ll text something back tomorrow morning – when you feel it vibrate longer than it would with an incoming text.

It’s a phone call.

You quickly glance around your coach and only spot an old man at the other end, snoring lightly, deeply asleep. You glance around even if you don’t have a mind to pick up the call, but then you think about your father. What if he had called before taking his life? Would things have gone differently had he done that, had someone picked up the phone?

You shake your head.

JOONG-GIL 💗 flashes before your eyes, on the lit screen of your phone.

“Are you alright? Where are you?” is what he says when you bring your phone to your ear. The fact that it’s him – him, and his deep, reassuring voice, and the fact that he’s up at three in the morning, and that he’s there, on the other side of the call – is like a bucket of cold water soothing every itch and every ache.

“On the train,” you murmur back, careful not to be too loud even though it’s just you and that old man, and a whole empty carriage between the two of you. “I..” Your throat closes up and your vision blurs. You feel scattered all over the place – Incheon, the Butterfly Park, Busan, your house, the beach, your mother’s hospital and your father’s office. Pieces here and there, hidden away from your memories, and it’s like you should retrieve them to be able to go forward at the same speed of this train you’re on, but they’re so many you have no clue where to start. “I dreamed about my father. And… butterflies.” Your voice breaks on that last word, and you wish Joong-gil were there, and that you were in his arms, sheltered away from the rest of the world.

His exhale at the other end of the line tickles your eardrum. “I wanted to come with you,” he confesses after a moment, “but I didn’t want to impose myself.”

“I wish I had asked you to come,” you confess in turn. The landscape flies by outside the train window and you wish you were going in the opposite direction so that you could come back when you’d be ready.

“You can ask me now, and I will be there as soon as I can.”

Seconds tick by.

The train stops at a station. A few sleepy passengers get off, luggage in hand, but for the rest, the place is deserted.

You think it over, again and again, wondering whether you have a right to. “Can you come to me?” you breathe out, and then, on the next inhale, hold the air in, waiting for his reply. You’re hit by the realization that you want him to say yes – and that you want him to stay. Not just at your house in Busan, but by your side. Today, and tomorrow, and the day after. If you could always have a tomorrow with him, you’d be happy. As light as a butterfly, as bright as a buttercup.

“Of course I can.” You hear his smile. It’s like with your father in that dream: you didn’t need pictures to know how his face would move, what his expressions would morph into.

“And can you… stay on the line?” you ask, clutching onto your phone like a lifeline. “For a little bit longer?”

It’s silent, at home with your mom.

The pale light of dawn seeps in through the lace curtains of the kitchen. It’s like the ghost of a caress on the skin, so very distant, like a memory fighting to come back to the surface once more. Goosebumps awaken on your skin as you look at your mother falling asleep on the yo she laid out in the living.

Sometimes you wish you could be in her head, read her thoughts, or that you could both open up more. Talk about what happened without a ball of tears and regrets and sorrow forming in your throat. It would be the very best thing after watching both your mother and father sleep on that yo, together, gently kissed by the light of a new day rising above the ocean.

You’re quiet when you get up and even quieter when you wash the mugs you used to drink tea to warm up after the biting cold that welcomed you at the train station. When you’re done in the kitchen, you pad back to your mother and lie down next to her.

Her breathing is soft and even. The expression wrinkles on her face have softened, and you look at the way her eyes slowly dance behind her closed eyelids.

Is she her own caterpillar? Is she wrapped up in her own cocoon, under those floral blankets, waiting to turn into a butterfly?

Is that what comes next?

Did your father become one?

You glance down at your wrist, at that red outline of a butterfly, and there’s this tiny voice at the back of your mind – six-year-old you stuck inside the Butterfly Park, maybe? – that whispers back, yes, yes, he’s become the prettiest of them all.

She stirs in her sleep, your mother, when you gently push away those stray hairs from her face, but she doesn’t wake up. You notice the first gray hairs, poking out here and there on her head, even though her face looks as young as ever, so different from the version of her that picked you up this morning.

Is that how much tomorrow struck her, when it finally came?

You wake up a short time later, without having even realized you were on the verge of dozing off yourself.

Once, twice, you blink the sleep out of your eyes. You’re lying on your right side, facing the French window that opens onto what’s left of the backyard vegetable garden and the empty flower beds.

It takes you a while to come back to planet Earth, and a little bit longer to realize your phone is vibrating next to your head.

“Hello?” you ask without checking the caller’s ID. With your voice so groggy and laced with sleep, much lower than it usually is, it’s no wonder Joong-gil manages to figure out,

“Were you asleep? Did I wake you up?”

“No, I was already awake.” Your free hand shoots up to shield a yawn but it’s a second too late, even when you sit up and yawn a second time. Your gaze flits around the room, your left ear straining to try and pick up eventual sounds, but a look at the clock hanging above the television – a little past seven – and you realize your mother must have already left for work. “Are you still driving?”

“I’m about to pull up at your house,” he replies, and this time, a bit more awake, you pick up the faint notes of the music in the background. It sounds familiar, something you’re sure you’ve already heard even though you’re unable to fully discern it right now.

A gasp of surprise slips past your lips before you can hold it back, and then you’re shooting up to your feet, almost tripping in the tangled-up blanket. “I’ll wait at the door!”

The first thought that goes through your mind when you’re finally in his arms is, you smell like home. It’s sudden and not something you can really explain, but it still feels so raw, in a way. Like you’ve been stripped bare and he’s there, anchor and shield and lifejacket, and probably – definitely – so much more.

You breathe him in like you haven’t seen him in forever, and he lets you pull him in – closer, tighter, pulling at the wooly sweater under his puffer jacket, desperately clawing at his back, and desperately swallowing the tears back down. You’re strong enough, though, to stop yourself from crying.

It’s a different story one hour later, when he takes you to the cemetery.

You’re standing in front of the display case with the urn with your father’s ashes. There’s a picture of the three of you – your mother, ten-year-old you, and your father on the beach. All smiling at the camera, and it’s incredible how much pain you can hide behind a simple thing. You just show a glimpse of your teeth, and everything seems fine. Your mother’s crinkled eyes and a flower in her hair; you and your braces and those two stitched on your cheekbone from when you tripped right outside your ballet school; your father’s glasses, askew over the bridge of his nose, and his arms wrapped around the girls of his life.

“I missed you,” you blurt out, trying not to shake even though everything inside you is clenching up. You have no clue when the last time you showed up here was, always overwhelmed by his loss, and by life with just your mother, and your job, someone else’s dream that slowly but surely has become your own.

If you sing loud enough, will he hear your voice? Will he see you? Will he come back?

“I miss you.”

You’re not even really aware of Park Joong-gil standing a few steps behind you. Looking at you. Looking at your father’s urn, at your father’s picture, at the tiny bouquet you pasted to the glass. Looking at you looking at all that, taking it in like it’s something that is ripping you apart.

And it is.

The pain you thought you had overcome – the pain you always manage to ignore while in Seoul – hits you out of nowhere, from each and every direction. It pulls you under like a wave; it shoots you up into the sky like a rocket. Pain and memories play a game of tug-o-war with you – your body and your mind and your soul.

Just as you were strong enough not to cry in Joong-gil’s arms earlier, you’re strong enough to cry now. The words you’d like to tell your father – whisper, and speak, and yell – die on your tongue, on your sobs, as you crouch down under the weight of a yesterday with him, a today with his ashes, and a tomorrow that’s so shrouded in fog you’re not able to see through it.

It takes your body endless minutes for you to register Joong-gil’s arms around you – strong and secure, pulling you back into his chest like you can let go for a moment and lean everything on him. His face is in the crook of your neck, gently whispering things you can’t really hear over the sound of your sobs and the blood in your ears.

“I told myself I wouldn’t cry,” you manage to say at some point, blinded by the tears, barely aware of the fact that you’re now sitting on the cold tiles of the floor, between Joong-gil’s legs, instead of still being squatted down. “But I can’t.”

He lets you cry it out. He lets you tug at his hands when you silently beg him to hold you closer so that you can feel something else other than this emptiness and this pain, like your own cocoon of sorts.

And he sits there with you through it all, until the tears die out and you’re resting back against him, the back of your head leaning against his shoulder as you look up at the small bouquet you bought for your father from the floor. His lips are by your temple, the ghost of a touch that does more at calming you down than any amount of words ever could.

“How are you really?” is the first thing you ask, voice sore and throat tender. You’re still looking up at those flowers, breathing through your mouth, and while your heart is still beating fast, it’s not desperately galloping in your chest anymore.

“Hmm?” His hum reverberates in his chest and into yours, and he tugs you a little closer.

You swallow – saliva or another lump of tears or simple sadness, you don’t know. “My father always seemed so happy, but then he took his life. He wore a mask for so long and we didn’t see it. And we couldn’t do anything. We never asked.” You tilt your head slightly to the side, taking one deep breath after the other. “So, how are you really?”

He thinks for a while – or that’s your own interpretation of it. And the silence is a nice caress on the heated skin of your face, where the cold of the weather is making what’s left of your tears bite. “I’m… okay. I’m so in love with you that being powerless now tears my heart out of my chest.”

When he asks your same question back, it takes you a while for you to give him an answer, to make order among your feelings and your thoughts and your memories. To lighten your heavy heart and call back your soul.

You tell him about your father, and your mother, and how overcome your job makes you feel, like you’re constantly wandering without going anywhere or like you’re going in too many directions at once without finding your place. You tell him about Bit-na, and how sometimes you wish you were her, teaching little kids ballet and being free to date her Seung-min without having to worry what anyone but her parents think of her and of him and of them together. You tell him about Joon-woong, so sweet and dear, caught up in this web of lies just because your agency wants more money.

And you tell him about yourself. About six-year-old you, her bunny backpack, her twin braids, looking at butterflies with her Daddy. About the tooth you chipped in your Incheon home or all the times you used to run on the beach after moving to Busan.

And then you tell him how you feel – that you don’t know, but that you know you want to love him more than you love everything else because he feels right. And like home. And that your dad would have really loved him, with his deep voice and how he plays the piano, and because that one night he made all of his daughter’s favorite foods, and because he makes her feel happier than she’s ever been in a long time.

When you eventually get off the floor and walk outside, it’s snowing finely.

“If we were normal people, what would you do?”

“I’d love you openly.”

Your mother ends up insisting for Joong-gil to stay at your place again. Having someone around is nice, she says, putting even more rice into his bowl than she normally would for herself, after commemorating her husband’s death.

You really don’t want to say it out loud, but it’s clear on her face: how happy she is that Joong-gil is here. Not just simply in her home, but in your – her daughter’s – life. It’s like life is light again, whether that’s for just a moment or whether that’s something that’s here to stay.

When you wake up the next morning, still wrapped up in Joong-gil’s arms on the yo in the living room, you’re barely able to read Joon-woong’s text before you see the pictures someone must have taken of you and Joong-gil at the cemetery.

[6:53 AM] joon-woongie: i hope you’re doing alright, with everything but especially with the anniversary of your dad’s passing 🫂 i’m sorry someone took pictures, but don’t let the agency get to you. i’m on your side and we can both bite back together!

“What are you doing up already?” Joong-gil’s morning voice is a nice combination of groggy and soothing, even more when those words are muttered into the crook of your neck.

“Someone took pictures of us during my breakdown,” you whisper back, eyes glued to your figure crouched on the floor, head on your knees, and Joong-gil kneeling down behind you. The way he held you. The way he pulled your hair away from your face. You didn’t even know he had kissed the side of your head, and that’s the only thing you’re grateful for those pictures because that new knowledge really does make you feel warm inside. “I’m really sorry. Your agency will probably give you hell.”

“Hell is playing by your agency’s lie of you and Joon-woong dating,” he exhales, making you turn in his arms and taking your phone from your hands just when it starts to ring. “I want to be with you. I’ve wanted to be with you for a long time now. I don’t want to have to hide our us just because I’m afraid of what might or might not happen tomorrow. I don’t want a tomorrow where we’re not together because of the rest of the world.”

Your smile turns into a grin, and soon you’re beaming. You haven’t beamed this bright in fuck knows how long, and it feels good. It feels great, even, and you want to continue feeling like this. Today, and tomorrow, and the day after. “Is that your confession to me?”

“I’d confess to you every single day, with every single breath I take,” he grins. “Call Joon-woong. I can handle anything they’ll throw at us.”

When you pick back up your phone, however, it’s your agency calling.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Wow, kudos to you for reading this far! 😅💕

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