Even if I did sort of want to be.
“What about your group members?” I asked, massaging my sore knee.
“Do you know how they form groups, mate?” He huffed a laugh. “Friendships aren’t mandatory.”
My fingers stilled from where I’d been prodding my sore knee. The information didn’t surprise me, it was common knowledge that groups were put together based on a variety of factors; friendship rarely being among them.
“Is that why you called? You want to be friends?”
“Hell, why not?” He laughed.
I felt my lips twist in a grimace that wasn’t quite pity but was a close relative.
“I figured,” he went on, “that of all the people involved in this weird, love quadrangle, you and I are just window dressing.”
A bark of laughter escaped me, and it took me a moment to be able to speak.
“Explain,” I said, slightly breathlessly.
“Okay, see here’s the thing,” Tae began, enthusiastic, “Hyejin and Jihoon are the main attraction, right? The rags have been circling them for bloody ages, trying to catch them together, and spinning this whole unrequited love angle. But then you come in, the ‘dark-haired girl’.”
“You know about that, huh?” I asked weakly.
Tae made a dismissive sound. “There may be loads of us, but the idol world is small, and that was big.”
“Great,” I said, drawing the word out in a long, monotonous sound that made him laugh.
“So now we’ve got this angle where either Hyejin is the dark-haired girl or someone is cheating on someone.”
“And where do you fit into this quad we’re sharing?” I said. I picked idly at the frayed hems of my jeans.
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said confidently. “I’m the archetypal playboy, remember? My role is interchangeable in any story. In this case, I happened to have dinner in the wrong restaurant, at the wrong time. So now I’m cheating with Hyejin on poor, old Jihoon. Or, Hyejin is stringing us both along. It’s like those choose your own story books,” he said, and I snorted. “You get topick whichever version you like. Or whichever version sells more papers. Hey! That’s your job now, right?”
“Hardly!” I said, affronted. “I don’t write splash-pieces.”
Nor would I, so long as I had a choice.
“Yeah, yeah, fair enough,” he agreed easily.
“So,” I said, picking up the threads of his analogy, “you and I are ‘window dressing’ because Joon and Hyejin are the main characters?”
“Bingo!”
“Holy hell,” I moaned.
“How does it feel to be a side character in your own life?” Tae asked cheerfully.
“Familiar,” I replied, darkly.
He laughed, and despite the subject we were discussing, I could see the funny side. I’d spent the whole day worried about this, but somehow I was laughing as if it was just more irreverent nonsense.
I inhaled, and it felt like I was able to get more air in than I had in hours.
“Do you ever get used to this?” I asked, expecting an equally irreverent quip, but instead he fell quiet, and I got the impression that no, no you didn’t.
“Can we just talk about something unrelated to any of that?” He asked, sighing so heavily I imagined I could feel the gust on my cheek.
“You wanna shoot the shit?” I guessed.
