Woojin had apparently collaborated with a big electronics company in Korea.
Ace and Lee were on holiday in Malta.
I hadn’t minded this notification as much, seeing as how it had been a picture of them trying on hats in a market and generally just goofing off, looking for all the world like two kids who’d given their parents the slip.
Every day it was a fresh reminder of a world I no longer had exclusive access to. I’d gotten used to the silence of the past two years. I was able to acknowledge how necessary that had been for my own well being, but now I was realising I’d been lulled into a false sense of security, instead of preparing myself for thegroup’s inevitable reentry to the same industry my entire career was focused on.
It was so strange to be a casual observer of people I had known, admired and, even liked.
I would see photos of them uploaded to their social media, or the official ENT account, and for a moment it was like looking at a picture of an old school friend, only for the realisation to hit a moment later. I did not know this person anymore. It was disorientating. Two separate lives overlapping, like double exposure captured on film. I tried not to linger on those posts.
Ace’s tentative reappearance into my life was like being dumped into a field of emotional landmines. I kept trying to navigate around them, but each option – message him back or ignore it – felt like it might set off something I wasn’t emotionally prepared for.
But, eventually, the good manners I’d been brought up with proved to be stronger than any other feeling I might have had. Leaving him on ‘read’ made my skin itch. I just couldn’t do it, and he didn’t deserve it.
I responded two days later, with a simple,
Thank you.
I stared at those two words for so long that they simultaneously took on a plethora of new meanings, and somehow meant nothing at all. Then, like a nervous crescendo thrumming under my skin, I added four more words.
I hope you’re well.
No questions, no expectations of a reply, just well wishes.
I could live with that.
I felt sick for hours after.
Towards the end of the month, I opened up my laptop the way I did every morning, only to almost immediately slam it shut again.
I pushed my chair back from the desk in one, screeched movement and lurched to my feet.
“Fuck.” I dragged a hand down my face. “Fuck,” I said louder, pressing a hand over my heart, trying to pretend the slight tremor in my hand was due to the half cup of coffee I’d already drunk.
I moved over to my little window that looked down on the street below, pressing my forehead to the cool glass and watched how my too fast breaths misted the surface.
“Fuck,” I exhaled, as I admitted to myself that I was not okay enough for this.
But I would try to be. I was always trying to be.
I leaned away from the window, rolled my shoulders back, took a deep breath and sat back down at my desk. I opened my laptop and tried not to flinch as the webpage reloaded.
BAEK JIHOON AND LEE HYEJIN: IT’S OVER.
ROYAL COUPLE OF K-POP OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCE SPLIT. CLAIM IT’S ‘AMICABLE’
In the nearly three years since our breakup, I had done a lot of work to be able to move on, from both him, and the life I hadbeen building for myself, brick by brick.
I had learned in that time that it didn’t matter how often I catalogued his faults. I had never been able to demonise him, because I had never seen him as anything less than the flawed human being he was. And I had loved him, regardless.
I had also come to accept that I had insulated myself in his life, and while comfortable at the time, that had left me without protection when the collision had come.
Being without him had meant learning to want things again.
Learning to like myself as who I was now and not versus who I had been then.
Learning to look forward to a future I had to build for myself. But most of all, it had meant learning who I was, under the realisation of a failed dream, and a failed relationship, because for years – even before Jihoon – I’d sketched an image of myself in my mind of who I wanted to be. Without a career in music production, and without Jihoon, who was I? I had needed to figure that out, or drown in a sea of what ifs.
