Page 49 of When Worlds Collide
He took my hand in his, brought it to his mouth and placed a kiss upon my palm before holding it against his cheek as we sat in the aftermath for several heartbeats.
“I don’t want that for us,” his voice caught on a knife’s edge. “I don’t want them to do that to us. I know you did not ask for this, I know being a secret is not what you want, but I can’t… I don’t…” his shoulders heaved as he exhaled shakily.
The sudden introspection took me by surprise, and for a moment I didn’t know how to reply. Shock stilled any response I might have had. I hadn’t realised he knew how conflicted I felt about our relationship. Hell, I tried hard enough to push those doubts down. But, somehow, he knew.
How the press, and the anti’s – a colloquial term for people actively spreading hate about an artist – had treated him and his family during such a horrible time was beyond words. I found it difficult to understand how anyone could be so hateful to a person they didn’t know. Press behaving badly, I could understand that – however repulsive I found it. Morallybankrupt news outlets were the unspoken price paid for fame. But antis, and saesangs… I didn’t have the words.
So, I stopped trying to find them, and gave him the only thing I could – myself.
I pulled my feet out of his lap until I could put them on either side of his legs, and scooted forward until I could pull him against me, offering him the safety of my body. He wrapped his arms around me tightly, burrowing his head in the crook of my neck as he took deep, juddering breaths, trying to breathe around the traumatic memories of that awful time.
I ran my hands up and down his back, just trying to be the calm he needed, while I digested the information he’d disclosed.
Suddenly, his overt distrust of the media made complete sense, and why – out of all the members – he was the least engaged on social media.
And while I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want it to stick in my mind like a nagging thought, I couldn’t help the way my brain repeated, “I don’t want that for us…”
And I couldn’t help wondering, would there ever be a world in which I didn’t have to be the secret he needed to keep?
Later, after the heavy shadows of the afternoon had faded into the more mellow glow of early evening, we sprawled over the sofa, battling each other on a mobile game Jihoon had gotten me hooked on.
The sun had begun to fall further down the sky, painting the mostly white room in splashes of weak pinks and golds, the day’s last hurrah.
When the chime from the front door sounded, it surprised us both, a jarring sound that cut through the tranquillity of the apartment with the threat of ‘someone’ being at the door.
I shot an alarmed look to Jihoon, who looked back at me in equal shades of bewilderment, before we quickly and furiouslydebated the merits of either one of us answering it. The famous singer, or someone completely foreign to both this country and this building? What if it was a curious neighbour?
As the door chimed again, we agreed on a plan: I would go and look through the peephole, and if they looked harmless, I’d open the door and… go from there.
So, while Jihoon hid round the corner to the living room, I approached the front door and tentatively put my face close enough to the thick wooden door to be able to see through the small glass lens.
My head shot back almost immediately and I blinked a few times, before pressing forward again, not trusting my brain to correctly interpret the image.
“Um, Joon?” I called hesitantly. Immediately he came over, his face a mask of trepidation and confusion.
“I think it’s for you,” I said, dazed.
Jihoon’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t hesitate to lean into the door to look through the peephole, pulling back after only a moment and then, though I didn’t know the words he said, from his tone, I could tell they were colourful. I just stood there, as if rooted to the spot, thoughts a fuzzy stream of incomprehension.
“Jagiya,” he started, as though talking to a startled animal, “I would have warned you if I knew they were going to turn up. I’m sorry.” He sighed, while my palms had started to sweat, even as my mouth went as dry as dust.
Jihoon hesitated another beat, before he unlatched the door and swung it open.
There, on the threshold, stood Seokmin and Sungmin. Otherwise known as Ace and Lee. And they were holding a Christmas tree.
End Of Part One.
Chapter 16
“Yah!” Jihoon cried at the two younger men, followed by a stream of Korean so fast, so incomprehensible it was as if I’d never heard the language before this moment.
Whatever he was saying seemed to chastise the two men, even as they still stood with grins on their faces. Lee Sungmin – the group’s best dancer and second rapper – said something to Jihoon that made him groan, even as he held the door open wider. With his other arm, though, he pushed me behind his back.
With the door further open, and presumably with permission from Jihoon, the two other members of GVibes crossed the threshold, holding a thick, bushy fir tree between them as if it were a drunk friend they were propping up on the way home. As they passed me, and while I watched in silent shades of disbelief, they each bowed politely to me with correspondingly polite ‘annyeonghaseyo’s. Numbly, I returned the gesture, watching asthey walked further into the apartment, only banging into the wall once.
Jihoon closed the door and then rested his head against it, groaning softly – an action that might have amused me, had I not just seen two members of GVibes casually carrying a Christmas tree past me.
“Um…” Other words failed me as I listened to the scuffle coming from the living room, where it sounded like the tree might have fallen over.
