Re-focusing on the photos I tried to see it from the angle of the photographer. Most of them were taken either from the side, or behind me. The subject was clearly Jihoon, rather than specifically me, which might explain why I hadn’t noticed someone taking pictures of us.
But then, hadn’t I thought I’d seen someone? I tried to think back to that night. It had been just after the confrontation with the drunk guy who’d tried to bully me into dancing with him.
But then Jihoon had appeared.
My lips curled into a smile as I remembered the way he’d so possessively come to my rescue. I’d spent the evening on the fringes of the party, watching, but apart. But then he’d asked me to dance, in front of everyone, because I was his, and he was mine.
Through the haze of warm, fuzzy memories, I remembered the moment I thought I had seen someone pointing a phone at us, right as he led me through the crowd to the dance floor. I’d dismissed it, because when I’d looked again, no one was there.
Looking at the photo of the masked stranger with her hand in Jihoon’s, I think I’d been right at the time. Someone had been pointing a phone at us.
The photos from that night were… intimate. Framed in such a way that it was clear the two people were more than friends or colleagues.
My mask – that beautiful blend of crystals, swirling metal and delicate ribbon – was firmly in place, and while my hair wasn’t such an extraordinary colour that it immediately matched with that of the wet-haired girl in the rain. It was not such a leap to assume that the dark-haired, faceless girl in the rain was also the masked one at the ball. It wouldn’t be difficult to believe those women were also the as yet unidentified woman from the conference room.
None of this was that unbelievable.
Honestly, the most unbelievable part of all this was that out of three separate instances of being ‘caught in the act’, none of them had clearly captured my face.
It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying, because it was either an incredible coincidence, or it was deliberate.
If it was coincidence, it was because Jihoon was the goal, not me. He was what they were after. That is what stopped it from being funny and immediately veered into being sad. Because in every instance, someone was after him.
At his uncle’s funeral.
When he was in LA.
While he was attending a work event.
When he was out on the street, like any other person. Except unlike every other person on that street, he didn’t get the right to his privacy.
How did anyone live like this?
Was it any wonder he’d had such anxiety about us going public?
My pulse thundered in my ears as a spear of anger lanced through me.
My thoughts were in turmoil, a tangled mess going too fast for me to make sense of. The birds outside were too loud. The silence in my room pressed against me like cotton wool, and I couldn’t. Fucking. Think.
Goddammit!
I pushed to my feet, feeling like a caged animal with the overwhelming need to be in motion, to do something. But what? Frustration clawed its way up my throat and burned behind my eyes, threatening more tears. But I didn’t want to cry, I was so sick of crying. Frustration thrummed under my skin, a roiling culmination of emotions I’d barely contained for weeks. I didn’t want to be dealing with yet another, fucking thing. I didn’t have the mental bandwidth. I was full to the emotional brim.
I had left my boyfriend, the life we had been trying to make to be here with my parents, who were going through a life-changing event, during the middle of an unprecedented, global health crisis, and a dating scandal had followed me from five thousand miles away!
Despite my best efforts, I burst into hot, angry tears, because fuck! I was so mentally drained.
I still didn’t have any answers to the question of our public relationship status. It was a can we perpetually kicked down the road, and every kick sent us closer to the kind of publicity neither of us wanted. I didn’t want to be a secret, but nor did I necessarily want the general public knowing – or caring – who I was. There were reasons why we had never resolved the issue.
I gave myself a moment to wallow, before I wiped my face, took several deep breaths, and did the one thing I knew would bring me comfort.
I pressed call on my phone.
He picked up almost right away.
“Jagiya,” his voice was like a balm to my frayed nerves, and I took the first deep inhale I’d felt capable of in minutes.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
