Jihoon video called me not long afterwards, breathless but jubilant.
“I saw you,” he crowed, grinning widely. “You were singing.”
I ducked my head to hide my blush.
“Yeah, well… it seemed rude not to,” I grumbled.
“It made me so happy to see you.”
“I’m surprised you could see me at all, there were so many people.”
“Jagiya,” he chided, “how many times must I tell you? All I see is you.”
My breath hitched as my heart swelled.
“I’m so proud of you,” I croaked, lump forming in my throat.
His smile, somehow, seemed to widen.
“Come,” he said, “say that to the other members.”
And then we were moving, and I watched through my little screen as Jihoon stood up and began walking. It didn’t take long to get wherever we were going, and he pushed a door open. The look on his face froze before the smile slipped, replaced with a complicated expression.
That’s when I heard the voices of the other members, hushed though they were. I recognised the lilting voice of Minjae, and… someone crying?
“I should go, Kaiya.” Joon refocused on me, his mouth pinched unhappily, and I nodded. “I’ll call you later.Saranghae.”
“Saranghae,” I said back, clumsy though it was. I was trying.
As the line dropped, I tried not to speculate on what I’d heard. They were all dear to me, even if we weren’t close. Weren’t proper friends. The thought of one of them hurting was a unique kind of pain, because they were separate to me, and yet also close. It was a strange thing to care so much about a person you barely knew well enough to go out for coffee with.
The joy of watching their concert was slowly leaking away, lost in the echoes of the cries I’d heard off-screen, and the pain in Jihoon’s eyes.
When he called me the next morning, we didn’t go into detail about what I’d overheard, but he’d confessed how the members were taking it hard.
I hadn’t pressed him because I respected their privacy, but I’d gotten the impression they were all struggling with therealisation that this performance might very well be the last one before–well, before.
This performance had been a kind of farewell, and I don’t think any of them realised it until after their encore. It was heart-breaking.
Late June
“Hey, you!” I grinned into the camera. Jihoon and I had finally made the time to video call after days of missing each other.
The new studio album had released to wide, critical acclaim, and had already been lauded the album of the year, but becausethey’d released it far sooner than intended, their schedule had been jam-packed.
They had been promoting the album almost non-stop since finishing the online festival.
Jihoon smiled, but there was a short-lived quality to it, like his face couldn’t quite bring itself to hold the expression for long.
“You look tired,” I observed, my own smile slipping.
“I am exhausted,” he admitted. “I feel like I have not slept in days.”
My eyebrows pinched, but I tried to keep my concern to myself.
“What were you doing today?”
We normally managed to keep a pretty consistent message exchange going throughout the day, even if it was just tiny details, like what one of us ate for lunch, or sharing funny videos, but today all I’d had was a good-morning message.
