“I am sick of my name being linked to his. The press compare our performances, now they compare our love lives and say we are fighting over the same woman. He scoffed, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the idea of them competing in a love triangle, or the idea that there would even be a competition between them.
I bit my tongue, but my forehead was beginning to ache from the depth of my frown.
“I don’t want to see his name next to mine anymore, he’s an asshole.”
“Hey now, don’t you think you’re being a bit unfair?” I didn’t even mean to say it, it just slipped out.
“You think he’s not an asshole?”
I took a breath, trying to remind myself that Joon was just stressed.
“I think he didn’t ask for this either and I think you’re being unfair.”
“Ky, you don’t know what he’s like! This is exactly the sort of scandal he gets involved in. There’s a reason he has a bad reputation.”
I’d obviously pressed on a sore point, and I was swiftly losing control of the conversation. This was not how I wanted it to go. How did we end up talking about Tae?
I tried to keep a reasonable tone when I said, “Joon, I don’t think that’s fair-”
“You keep saying that word,” he interrupted, ploughing over my words and treading them underneath.
“You don’t know him, you don’t know what this is like for me.”
I bit back a sigh. This was all going wrong.
“I’m just saying, it’s easier to blame a person than the real problem, which is the tabloids. He didn’t ask for this anymore than you or Hyejin. The tabloids are to blame, not Min Taeyang.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not!” My fist clenched under my thigh, and I drew it out, shaking it to try and relieve some of the tension coursing through me. “I’m just suggesting that maybe he isn’t the bad guy everyone has made him out to be and blaming him for something he has no control over doesn’t change or fix anything.”
Jihoon scoffed and it was an ugly sound.
“You don’t know him.”
“Then tell me,” I implored, “because right now it just sounds like you’re furious he wakes up breathing every day.”
“I’m not!” He bit out, and I heard him take a deep, shaking breath. “I am not, but I am so sick of having my name tied to his. Every article, every time I get photographed, there is always some comparison to him. It’s like I can not exist without him.” He grumbled something in Korean, and the only word I managed to pull from the stream was ‘breath’ and ‘dark’.
“I’m tired, Kaiya,” he said raggedly, like the words were being pulled up from inside him. “You don’t understand what that is like.”
“I do-or, I’m trying,” I replied, “I’ve watched how you handle this for months.”
“No,” he said firmly, “you watch. You do not know. You have no idea how it feels when millions of strangers decide who you are, what kind of person you have to be.”
I recoiled. “You think I don’t know what that’s like?”
Hadn’t I been called a whore by so many for daring to kiss my boyfriend behind closed doors? Hadn’t I been called a gold-digger? Hadn’t I been called a million things by a million people who’d come to their own conclusions about who I was, based on who I’d chosen to love?
How did we get here? I’d only wanted to tell him about what was going on with me, but right then, I felt minimised.
Even worse was the pain I felt coming off him in waves, because that was how he experienced pain. It radiated off him. He lashed out and hurt everyone around, but he couldn’t see it.
“You think I don’t understand what it’s like to be reduced to a headline?” The words were a whisper, I couldn’t seem to forceany power behind them with the lump that had formed in my throat.
“I think you can walk away from it,” he said, and the words had an accusatory edge that felt like they might cut me if I got too close. “I can’t.”
“You’re not being fair.” My voice trembled, or maybe that was my chin, I couldn’t tell.
