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One week into my stay, I’d submitted all my pieces to ENT, and my hands were empty of meaningful work. Passing the time became more a matter of strategy than relaxation.

There were only so many times during the day that I could open social media. Now that it was common knowledge I was on the tour, I had attracted some very unwanted attention.

Daily, I received message requests from people asking me to put them in contact with the members, usually accompanied by some variation of a desperate story, or a threat to expose me, for something, or other. It was bizarre on the lighter days, and alarming on the darker ones. I tried to ignore it.

One day, as I was helping my Mum clear out the pantry –

“Mum, this jar of passata expired last October!”

“Don’t be daft, it’s sealed, it’s fine, put it back.”

I pulled down a pretty, cut-glass vase from the top shelf, admiring how the facets reflected the mid-afternoon light across the floor in little sunbeams.

“This is pretty,” I said, putting it on the kitchen counter.

“Hmm?” Mum turned round to look. “Oh, that’s the vase that came with the flowers you sent last month.” She went back to inspecting use-by labels on jars.

“I–what?” I frowned, looking again at the vase, like I might somehow remember ordering something so obviously extravagant.

“You know,” Mum said distractedly, “the bouquet you sent for my birthday.”

I felt two things at the same time. Guilt, because I realised then that I had completely forgotten my Mum’s birthday last month. And something more complicated. A spreading sort of warmth that started at the edges of my chest and ended up prickling my eyes, because right then I knew with certainty who had sent my mum a bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase. He hadn’t told me. Maybe he presumed I would never find out. I stared at it, biting my lip as I fiddled with my necklace.

I told Becka about the vase that evening. As expected, her first reaction was suspicion, though I was quick to point out that I didn’t think Jihoon buying Mum flowers had anything to do with his plan to court me.

“His plan to do… what?” Becka’s entire face scrunched in confusion as she processed the word.

I paused, realising I had never told her about the conversation Joon and I had had at the top of the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto.

Which was how I finally ended up telling her about that, too.

She was deeply annoyed that I hadn’t mentioned it sooner. Becka knew all about the mess of conflicting feelings I had whenever I considered the vague, fragile possibility of Jihoon and me getting back together, but this was intentional. Not vague. Still fragile, though.

“He’s going to court you,” she said slowly, enunciating every syllable with the same level of disbelief Jihoon had shown the time I’d told him that people rolled cheese down a hill and then chased after it.

“I know,” I chuckled, looking away from the screen, ignoring the way I felt the tips of my ears growing warm. “That was pretty much my reaction, but with more Grandpa jokes.”

“The only proper reaction, honestly,” she agreed with a scoff. “Jokes aside, how do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, shrugging.

“So, business as usual, then.”

I groaned. “Look, this entire thing was already deeply confusing. Whacking on a fancy label like ‘courting’ doesn’t make the boundaries any clearer. I think it makes things more confusing, because there is a fairly big part of me that kinda wants to see him try,” I said, getting progressively louder as I gesticulated widely. “Is that mad?” I asked, staring at Becka, as if I was begging her to tell me what to do.

“Babes,” she said slowly, “first of all, calm down. Secondly-” She blew out a breath. “I think it’s okay to want to see if he can win you back. Just make sure you have boundaries this time,” she said in a tone that implied a wagging finger, and it – probably unreasonably – irritated me.

“I know, Becka,” I said tightly.

“I know you know.” And then, in a quieter tone, “I know you know. Because you’re not the same girl who nosedived in front of the famous pop star. You’re the person you were meant to be. Because you built yourself up, brick by brick. I just want you to remember that. You’re not the same girl.”

And wasn’t that just the crux of it? Because how could he ‘win me back’, when I wasn’t the ‘me’ he’d once won, to begin with?

But then, hadn’t I begun to see that perhaps he wasn’t the same person, either?

And if both of those things were true, then who were we to each other?

My throat was suddenly tight, and I felt a maelstrom of emotions I couldn’t begin to untangle for the young, wide-eyed girl I’d been. The girl who’d lived in a fairy tale for a while before the story had ended. But it was because of her that I was who I was now. No longer a side character in my own life.