Page 46 of When Worlds Collide
“You must have had some adventures; every kid has adventures,” I commented lightly, frowning as I focused on the tiny nail polish brush in my hand, swiping it gently across my toe nail.
“Bugger,” I muttered, once again flooding my cuticle.
Jihoon tutted, before he pulled my foot into his lap. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor, the volume on the TV down to a low hum as we talked.
He swiped a tissue across the excess nail polish, tidying it up before he held out his hand. I looked at him in confusion.
“Give me the bottle,” he commanded.
My eyebrows shot up, but I did as he instructed, handing over the little bottle of sparkly green nail polish we’d picked up in the shop earlier. I watched, bemused as he continued where I had left off – his eyes screwed up in concentration as he deftly applied the polish to my toe nails. There was something so bizarrely sexy about watching him do that, whether it was the look of concentration on his face, or the way his dexterous fingers–
“We didn’t have many adventures,” he said, and for a second, I had no idea what he was talking about, before I picked up the dropped thread of our conversation from a few moments ago.
“My parents, they wanted me to focus on my studies. And my instruments.”
“What did you do on the weekends?” I frowned. No adventures?
“Those were the weekends,” he chuckled.
“I know you play drums and guitar,” I said, leaning back on my hands as I remembered the second day we’d met, when he’d helped me tune a bunch of new guitars. I remembered what he’d said when we’d played one of the songs he’d helped write for GVibes – ‘Broken Promise’.
“I miss Busan. I wrote this song about what I thought my life was going to be like – back when I lived there. Before I moved to Seoul. Before GVibes.”
“Do you play anything else?”
He flicked his eyes up to meet mine, a small smile teasing at the corner of his lips.
“What?” I giggled as he ran a finger down my foot.
“Have you really never watched interviews? These questions, we get asked them a lot.” He turned his attention back to his task, focusing on the tiny polish brush.
He always seemed amazed that I didn’t know the tiny details about his life, and I guessed, when you were as famous as he was, past a certain point it probably was a bit unusual.
It must be so bizarre to have millions of people know so much about you.
“Honestly, I stopped looking at your social media when we were... getting to know each other.”
I couldn’t bring myself to call what we’d been doing ‘dating’ because long-distance calls and unspoken agreements hadn’t felt like it. Becka had called it a ‘situationship’, which felt about right.
Jihoon raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
I shrugged, but the memory of the days I’d spent obsessing over their fan-groups, and the media portrayals made me feel… icky. I remembered how on edge it had made me feel, like I was missing out on something crucial. I hadn’t been able to balance my own life with the overwhelming feeling that I needed to keep up with the constant movement of Jihoon, and GVibes, respectively, and after a time, I’d felt more like an obsessive fan, and less like the girl he’d eaten burgers with on the beach. I’d lost sight of myself during that time, and it was only when I’d ducked out of the fan spaces that I’d been able to reclaim myself, and the relationship we’d been tentatively growing for ourselves.
So, no, I did not know the ins-and-outs of Jihoon’s entire life because I saw it on a variety show taping, or read it in a biographical column. If I wanted to know something about him, I had the best source of information right in front of me, currently painting my toenails.
“I feel like if I followed you online, I wouldn’t see you,” I said after a few moments of collecting my thoughts. “I’d see Baek Jihoon, GVibes' visual. I don’t want to be your fan. I want to be your girlfriend.”
He paused, a smile stretching across his face, before he straightened up to look over at me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happy to hear someone say they’re not my fan.”
His fingers held my foot, so gently as he lifted it so he could lightly blow over the wet lacquer.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, suddenly remembering how we got to this point in the conversation.
Jihoon looked up at me from underneath his dark eyelashes. “Hmm?”
“Instruments. Apart from guitar and drums.”
