Beside me, Jihoon rolls his neck in a circle. I reach up to stroke his nape, rubbing the tight muscles under his warm skin. He smiles. “Thank you.”
“You’re deep in thought.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “What’s your favorite song of ours?” he asks me.
“Only Us.”
“Why?”
I pull up the English translation of the lyrics on my phone. “I like this verse,” I say, pointing at the screen.
He hooks his head over my shoulder to see.
When we stand together
Our knees are scratched rough
Filled with sand and pebbles
The lost cousins of boulders
The hidden children of the mountains
That used to encircle us
Brushing our palms down
The dust flies up like dice on a throw
Your hand on mine
Our feet lost in the dunes
My hand slips in your sleeve
Your arm warm against my side
Where I’ll keep it close forever
I found “Only Us” when I was on the plane, and something about the image caught my attention. There are pages of debate about the meaning, but when I read it through, I agreed with the consensus, that it’s about two people who leave everything to be together.
Unlike the other StarLune videos, which are slickly produced dance numbers with high-concept wardrobes, the video for “Only Us” is grainy and looks low-budget. The band wears ripped jeans and T-shirts, with mussed hair and ambitious eyeliner. There’s a sixth person, grayed out so you can’t tell their gender or age, and they all try to leave in turn before a door opens and light streams out. Only the faceless sixth person gets through, and they don’t look back when the door closes. The video ends with the image of the door, now weathered and faded, cracking open again.
I read over the lyrics. “It’s not as poppy and light as some of StarLune’s other songs.”
He gives me a wry smile. “The ones I write.”
“They’re good!” I don’t want to insult him, but it’s not like he doesn’t know that. Anyway, they’re chart-toppers.
“The ones Daehyun writes are more to your liking? Like this one?”
“Well…”
“I wrote ‘Only Us.’”
I frown. “Are you sure?”
“I know my own song, Ari.”
