Page 141

We lay on the sofa together, my head on Jihoon’s lap as I texted back and forth with Becka. His fingers carded idly through my hair while he read a book.

His phone rang and he put his book down, but his hand carried on stroking my hair. Until it paused. I raised my eyes to where he held the phone above my head. He frowned at the screen.

“Who is it?” I asked curiously, not understanding his expression.

“Uri appa,” he murmured.

“Does he normally call you?”

“No,” he trailed off.

I lowered my own phone, watching hesitantly as Jihoon accepted the call from his dad. I was close enough to faintly hear the words, but it wasn’t easy to understand. I picked up enough, and the context that I missed I saw play out on Jihoon’s face in real time.

Oh no.

I sat up, and he didn’t seem to notice. His hand hovered in mid-air like it hadn’t registered the absence of my hair. I wrapped my fingers around his hand and brought it into my lap, silently giving what little I could.

He ended the call and mechanically put the phone down, and then his eyes sought mine as if he needed something to hold onto.

“Joon I–I’m so sorry.” My voice trembled, but I forced strength into it. For him.

I’d never seen a person break before, but I saw it then. It wasn’t in the sob that shook his shoulders, or in the way his chest hitched as he fought to breathe through it, it wasn’t even the way he bent double like someone had punched him in the stomach. It was in the way his fingers blindly clutched for me, like if he didn’t hold onto me, he’d fracture. It was how he pressed his face to my chest, muffling his cries against my robe while I cradled his head in my arms, and it was in the way afterwards where his voice was rough in a way I’d never heard. Not after a strenuous day of performing, not after the flu. It was broken in a way that a voice only could be once a body had tried to push grief out in any way that it could, but found it was still there. Persistent, and perhaps permanent, waiting for scar tissue to grow over it.

Baek Hwayeon, his halmeoni, had passed away.

It seemed everything happened in slow motion and also in double speed. Jihoon called Youngsoo while I hurriedly packed for him – but only his main suitcase. Youngsoo told him not to bother with anything he wouldn’t need for Busan, and they’d arrange everything else to go in with the tour luggage. He needed to leave immediately.

“She’s coming with me,” he said into the phone, holding it between his ear and shoulder as he combed his hands through his hair.

I paused what I was doing to look up in surprise. His eyes darted to me, but his attention was on the call. I listened to him talk. His Busan satoori was so much more pronounced when he was agitated, and now that I understood what he was saying it was so much more noticeable than just an accent. It was a nonsense thing to notice at such a time.

“No…. Kaiya…. You know who.”

We hadn’t discussed that. We hadn’t discussed anything, really. He hadn’t been okay, and I hadn’t wanted to ask what happened next. Now though, holding a t-shirt bundled in one hand and a belt in the other, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“No. Book the flight…. I don’t care…. Then I’ll do it myself,” he growled, and then paused, listening to the call. “Just book me a flight!”

He pulled the phone away from his ear, jabbed the screen and tossed it onto the bed. He made a low noise of frustration in his throat and grabbed his hair, pulling at it until it stood on end.

I tossed the things I held into the open suitcase and stepped over it to get to him.

“Joon?”

“They won’t book you a flight,” he gritted out. “He says they can’t, but they can, they just won’t!”

I watched the way his face shifted through a myriad of expressions almost too quick for me to see and resisted the urge to press him with questions, settling instead on just one.

“You want me to come with you? To Busan?”

He looked at me, and I saw it in his eyes. The edge he was teetering on. This was something different from grief. This was turmoil working within the confines of a life that, at times, felt like a cage.

“They won’t let me book my own flight because of security. I have to do it their way, and I just, I can’t–” his voice broke, and I reached for his wrists, wrapping my fingers around them to pull his hands down so he didn’t rip out his hair.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. Then I’ll book my own flight.”

“I don’t want to sneak out of the country,” he said angrily, “I want to fly out with you. This is not something I should have to hide, like I’m a criminal. Is it really asking so much to want my girlfriend to travel with me?” His voice wavered through the heat of the words. I brought his hands to my chest, running my thumbs over his knuckles.

I knew this was something he truly believed, but I also knew this wasn’t what he was actually upset about. It was just the nearest, safest thing he could target.