“Not this year!” Frankie countered, shaking her head. “Anyway, you’re both alive and well, you still have yourpassports? Show me…? Okay, good. The two of you have fun, okay? Teddy, I know you’re excited about the work, but please don’t forget to eat and sleep.”
“I won’t forget to sleep.” Teddy chuckled. And when his sister was still clearly glaring at him from the camera, he added. “And eat.”
“And Lia?” she said, and Lia braced herself. “Have fun, okay?”
“That’s all?” Lia asked, and she didn’t realize she’d shut her eyes until she opened one to look at her sister through the screen. Frankie nodded. “Have fun?”
“Yeah, that’s all,” Frankie confirmed. “I looked at your ‘messages from the universe’ in the Stars app. Your mercury is all about being open to how life will respond to your innermost desires.”
“Ew,” said Teddy. Lia playfully whacked his shoulder.
“Ate, I don’t even know what my innermost desire is right now,” she pointed out. She’d once thought of herself as a candle with a tunneled wick—she needed evening out. But what that even meant wasn’t clear to her.
“Well, just remember to be open. The response will come in unexpected forms.”
Lia had gotten used to their sister tapping into the age-old patterns of the universe to find life’s answers. It was usually soothing, but once in a while, the universe liked kicking her ass while she was down, and Frankie always told her so.
Her mind flashed back to the night of her birthday, vaguely staring out of the balcony of her thirtieth-floor condo, and she shuddered. She thought she’d shut those thoughts out completely.
“Anyway, we will go, because someone needs a nap,” Frankie announced.
“Sam’s napping?”
“Me. I need a nap,” Frankie corrected Teddy. “Have fun, the two of you. Li, don’t lose your head over those KPop boys ha,” Frankie said, tutting her lips. “You have to outgrow that phase eventually. You’re in your thirties na! You’re in a vulnerable moment right now, they can worm their way into your heart before you know it.”
“What? I’m not even a KPop fan?”
“So that CoBOLT poster I found in the closet was Teddy’s? Why did it have Mac lip gloss stains on it?”
“CoBOLT poster…?” Teddy echoed.
“Ate, I’m not even a Kpop fan…anymore.”
And so it happened that both Mertola siblings were alternating between cooing at their inaanak and listing down Ate Frankie’s skincare bilins, and were too busy to notice a car pull up on the farther sidewalk, an island and a crosswalk away. That was, until they heard someone shriek and exclaim, “Omoooo, Ahn Yongjin-ssi!”
And Lia Mertola’s life was never the same again. From that moment onwards, there was her life before she knew Ahn Yongjin, and the life after.
Because, for all her denials and the lies that just slipped out of her lips, she was a KPop fan. Was, as in she used to be. Not anymore. And she knew that out of the small handful of second-generation bands that were overdue for a comeback, there was one band that she’d secretly pictured would be the one Teddy was about to work with. One band that held all the love and devotion Lia had hidden away from everyone, including herself.
She told herself she wanted it to be them. But she also told herself she wasn’t that lucky, except her bias showed up to pick her up from the airport.
Ahn Yongjin. Lead singer and leader of CoBOLT, second-generation idol, and former man of Lia’s dreams. The same man who was walking to her and Teddy with a smile on hisface, flanked by a bodyguard and a manager. He politely refused selfies from people who approached him, smiling with just the right amount of bashfulness. Autumn had just started in Seoul, so he was wearing a seemingly casual camel sweater with a zip in front pulled halfway down, dark, wide-leg jeans and thick boots. He was the embodiment of casual sophistication, especially with a blue koala plushie with a purple nose hanging from a carabiner attached to one of his belt loops.
Lying awake at night
I look at the sky lonely without you
He was as handsome as the day Lia first saw him, making a cameo in a very popular KDrama she’d copied off of her friend’s hard drive. At the time, he had a bit of a gap tooth, an awkward, crooked smile and had been terrible at acting, but Lia had found him charming and endearing for his earnest attempt at acting the cool guy—more so when he performed the drama’s OST on the show.
Are you here? Is it true?
Or are you lost in a bolt of blue?
But now that Lia could see him up close today, she realized that she was wrong. He wasn’t as handsome as the day she met him. If anything, Yongjin (Cal, his stage name was Cal) had fully grown into his looks and carried them well. He filled up spaces that he seemed a little shy about at first, and wore his charm on his sleeve as he fully owned that smile and waved comfortably at people who were clearly bad at pretending not to film him.
Like a bolt of blue
I knew it was you you you
