Taeyang was being bandied about as a philandering play boy, but apparently even he didn’t deserve to play second fiddle to Jihoon.
What made the last bit worse was the regularity in which Jihoon and Taeyang were openly compared.
It was no secret that Sol8 had been modelled after GVibes due to their massive success. Sol8 was often referred to as the little brothers of GVibes, and Joon and Tae seemed to be compared more often than not. They both suffered from a criminal case of good looks, were both often somewhat regarded as outsiders due to Tae being raised in Australia and Joon spending some years in the States.
Secretly, I harboured the suspicion that this comparison was one of the reasons Jihoon didn’t like Tae, because when you’re constantly being pitted against someone in competition, there had to be a winner.
I did appreciate that Solars – the fandom for Sol8 – mainly seemed to be trying to debunk the whole thing by sharing the unedited photos where Tae and Hyejin could clearly be seen as part of a group.
Already exhausted, I thew my phone down on the bed and dropped my head into my hands.
For several minutes, I just sat there, taking deep breaths as my mind raced, trying to piece it together and anticipating the response all the sides would need to put out.
By now, I knew better than to call Joon directly. He was more than likely sequestered in a board room, and I knew intimately how that would go, so instead I sent him a message.
Before it even went through, I knew I wouldn’t hear back from him, so instead, I went to find something to do.
Me
Are you okay? What can I do to help?
I sent two more messages throughout the day, but the only time I heard back was a brief message to say he’d call me later.
By the time I crawled into bed, he hadn’t. I tried to not overthink it, but it was hours before I fell asleep.
November 2nd
All night, I’d tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable no matter what. Anxiety churned in my gut, but for once it wasn’t an anxiety that stemmed from something I’d done. Quite the opposite.
For the first time since we’d been dating, what was going on with Jihoon had absolutely nothing to do with me, and in a weird way, that made it worse.
For every other scandal – the conference room, the rain photos, the ballroom photos – where we’d skirted the line of discovery, it had been me and Joon against the world. Together.
But this… this was Joon. I wasn’t involved. I wasn’t even in the country.
Far from feeling any measure of relief, it felt immeasurably worse, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
It might have been because I hated the thought of Joon dealing with it on his own. He’d been struggling for months. He’d denied it, but I saw the cracks in his carefully constructed mask.
It also might have been because it was yet again more rumours about him and Lee Hyejin. While I knew there was nothing going on, I was adult enough to admit I hated that he, or the company, hadn’t just come out and denied any connection between the two of them. It was plain to see why they hadn’t: rumours increased revenue.
How did the saying go? Ah, yes. All publicity is good publicity.
It also could have been because somehow, this latest rumour completely removed me from the picture and replaced me with someone else. It was an ugly, dark thought, but it kept stabbing away at me throughout the day.
By midday, I was a wreck.
Mum and Dad had gone out for a socially distanced walk with a local cancer support group, and they wouldn’t be back for hours. Somehow without them, the house felt like a cavern. I was just wandering around from room to room, rattling around like a ghost.
When my phone rang, it startled me so badly that I jumped, banging my knee into the side of a cabinet.
“Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I howled as I hopped over to the nearest chair.
I pulled out my phone, not bothering to look at the screen before sliding it up to accept the call.
“Baby, hi,” I breathed, trying to disguise the pain throbbing in my leg.
“Wow, Pom, I didn’t realise our relationship had progressed to pet names.”
