ANDY, YOU'RE A STAR

“i love dance dance revolution, i used to play it all the time - i was the local champ in gwangju,” she says in reply, already knows that he knows, but plays along nonetheless. the mask on her face serves as a decent cover to the grin that lifts her cheeks but she’s sure her eyes give her away when she stops being careful and meets his gaze head on. “i could probably even show you a few killing moves to use on stage with your band, if you’d like, junho-ssi. xlnc, right?”

their game of charades, playing pretend of the people expect them to be — strangers, two people of the industry who aren’t meant to be close; every force to exist working against them to pull them apart like magnets that come so close but never touch: it’s fun for the short time, pretending to be only friendly acquaintances and nothing more. but how long could they keep this act up for before it would inevitably grow old, fabricated, unbelievable?

if they were magnets, it would be hard to hide the blatant attraction that pulls them together every time. the arcade is expectedly crowded for a friday night, nothing too surprising; but junho still finds himself bumping into her side as he always does when there’s no one else around. he puts his hands back into his sweatshirt pockets to consciously force himself not to put his hands anywhere near her, not to let himself slip and reach for her hand. 

junho isn’t a good actor, and his questions remain short, vague to mask his lack of skill at the art. “yeah? how did that happen?” every question is just a filler until they make it out of earshot from her group of friends that one last crane of his head back tells them that nobody has even noticed they’ve wandered off. the machine in front of them blares its sample music and lights at them, a perfect volume to drown out their actual conversation. “they didn’t even notice we walked away,” junho comments, finally breaking character to smile at her as he steps up onto the dance mat and leans against the bar to let her browse through the songs list. 

“junho-ssi. xlnc, right?” he reaches a hand out of his pocket to playfully poke her side, laughing. “were you that formal with me when we first met?” maybe it was because he was half of the guilty party hiding their relationship from the rest of the world that junho was sure someone was bound to question their interactions at some point. there was always the glint of something more than sparkled in both their eyes when they looked at one another, and there was no way that couldn’t be obvious to anyone else. it’s exactly why meeting in an arcade of all public places made the most sense: dark, loud with bright lights to dim that glimmer just enough to reduce them both to cordial, erases the romance that was clearly there if you looked hard enough. 

they’d set the world ablaze.

even now, the heat is stifling in the best of ways. she shifts under him, frees her arms just enough to take the straps off altogether, lowers the bodice of her dress until she’s naked from the waist up. it’s an invitation, one that goes without saying, but she kisses him again anyway. she feels shy, sure, vulnerable, even, but there’s little else that she’s been quite as certain of as this. “i think you should make it up to me now,” she prompts, breathless, a callback to earlier.

it’s such a silly question. of course he’s proud of her.

“that should be a no brainer,” it’s something he won’t admit aloud, but he likes having her to be proud of, the two of them bordering on something so close to being called a legitimate couple; being proud of his girlfriend: the concept still seems so foreign in his head to think of her that way despite being almost certain that the two of them have already begun to cross that line together.

his recent prioritizing of eunju before nearly everything else in his life — namely his band and his bandmates — leaves junho somewhat unhinged. he could be downstairs with the rest of his group but instead he’s sneaking back into his room to have her all for himself. it’s not in character for him at all, but even more, he doesn’t think twice about it. he’s stopped thinking twice about her.

her mock insults do little but bring the dumbest, lovesick grin to his face and the familiarness of bubbling inside his chest. if he could live an entire life of listening to her speak, hear the hint of her satoori tucked beneath her words she tries to hard to tease him with, he would consider himself the happiest man alive. and if he could have that? then this — this moment — was equally as satisfiable.

it’s not that he even needs her verbal confirmation to assure himself she feels the same way about him as he does her, but when it does come, there’s nothing he has to say. instead, he kisses her again, again, again until he’s playfully drowning her in a shower of kisses all over her face and neck. everything suddenly feels right, like all of their time spent sparing glances at one another, sneaking into her training rooms at her company long after everyone had gone home — for a girl with an arguably busier schedule than his own, someone he never would’ve pictured himself hovering over in a hotel room half a year later, junho couldn’t argue with the universe dropping oh eunju into his lap.

     tilts his head, thinks back. “if you can accomplish something, i mean. no one’s really believed the when, have they?” but he did. sanha did. 

“i’m not bothering,” it takes a lot to get junho riled, but sanha, of course, has learned over the years just the right buttons to push. the smaller male reeks of alcohol clear on his body, his breath, his clothes — it’s gravely unprofessional. he’s pathetic. junho can’t help but smile too.

to think that years after leaving busan they’d wind up in a luxurious hotel in los angeles with luxury brands on their bodies; how they’d worked their ways from the empty back streets of busan to here, now moments away from whoever would throw the first punch — it says a lot about the both of them, how they’d truly never be entirely liberated from the roots from which they’d both came. their fights always resorted in some sort of petty roughhousing that would lead to one getting a black eye or a bloody nose. in busan, it was out of childhood immaturity, forgotten the next day on their bike rides to the cliffsides. now, it was unresolved tensions, built upon years of jealousy, arrogance and reality’s sweet poison that is swallowed when reality hits right after the teenage years are over.

sanha has never backed down, not when he was was the taller one, not when he was the one on the ground. truthfully it pissed junho off how the boy could always manage to get back on his feet and find the drive to fight some more. he could just never let him win an argument: it was always about him, always hyung first.

an audible huff escapes his lips at sanha’s personal digs. he rolls his eyes, visibly bothered by the male’s lack of ammunition. the amount of physical power he wields over him already keeps his confidence high. “when i’ve accomplished something with my life,” he’s chuckling now, raising his hand to pry off sanha’s tiny fingers from his chest to properly shove them back against his own chest where they belong. “— says the hyung whose sole purpose is to cover for his sunbaes,” he places a hard emphasis on the word as he’s shoved harder a second time; his face hardens, and something in him visibly snaps when sanha jabs just hard enough. his eyes go dark from the anger penting up inside his chest, ready to explode. 

“That’s just fantastic.” Sarcasm laced a false tone of enthusiasm. He draped the headphones around his neck and shut his music off, craning his neck to glancr over at Junho. It was difficult ( and worthless ) to hide the disdain dripping from his words. His expression, however, showed a hint of a smirk. “Did you hear that? We get to cover a song from Ed Sheeran, himself. Think we’ll do it justice?”

the question of which direction their band would go in, whether it would linger in its realm of mainstream pop and rock, was constantly being tossed around. one day the company wants them to sound like every other group out there, the next and they’re being told to play like they’re acdc. the fickleness of what koala.t wants from xlnc is frustrating and only makes the fan criticisms of their strange medium harder to address. 

junho, quick as he always is to jump onto something first, immediately prepares himself to refuse. ed sheeran is in an entirely different genre than their group — junho’s sure his members don’t even listen to him. there’s no sense in covering a song from an artist that their group has no ties to musically, whether or not it’s for enjoyment or for the hype of covering an english song solely targeted to their international fans. there’s no doubt he cherishes the international xl-ents for being such a supportive fandom, but a song over a year old that he knows is still only popular in korea? what about the entire selection of every other american rock song the group could do such a better job at covering instead?

“yeah, i heard it,” he wants to roll his eyes, but their manager is currently in the passenger seat, turned to face the rest of the group. it’s been over a year and they’re still being crammed into the same mini van they’d ridden in to their first live performance. it makes him a little claustrophobic, especially right now. he can tell by seojin’s tone that the other male isn’t feeling it, either. then again, he was just passed out the entire carride. 

still, eunju grins, playful but flattered. “you must really like me, huh?”

he likes to make her squirm, get her all embarrassed until her face is as red as it is now. “so you admit you missed me too,” junho teases, plucks at any opportunity he can to get eunju to admit what they both already know. they’re already past the point of clarifying the mutual feelings between each other, but he still likes it when she tucks her hair behind her ears when she’s acting shy. her nonchalance tugs his lips into a wide smile that finds its way to meet her lips in a gentle kiss.

there’s something ironic about how maybe she’s starting to become the priority on his plate.

“you’d be surprised,” he says. it’s sad for him to admit, but the truth still stands about his band’s’ lenient schedules; it’s given him too much time to think about her, their potential to be, well — something. he likes the idea, but at the same time, it worries him to think about how much they both would be jeopardizing by stepping into such uncharted territory. one mishap and it could be the end for both of them.

there’s nothing he wants more than to support whatever she wants to do, but the fundamentals of their relationship go against those rules — you can’t have both. but was junho going to be a greedy bastard and try to keep both his career and the girl he’s fallen so hard for all to himself? absolutely.

“of course i watch,” his tone is a-matter-of-fact, fake offense at the idea that he wouldn’t watch her show, “i vote for you every week.” it’s become his own weekly ritual, no matter how small an impact, to make sure she makes it as far as possible in the show. he sees potential in eunju making it far, maybe even to first place. articles about her say nothing but good things — he couldn’t disagree with them. “a video or two, you sure it wasn’t a few dozen more than that?” he teases again, this time growing a little more playful as he swoops down to bombard her face and neck with butterfly kisses, nuzzling his nose to the line of her jaw to pepper some more behind her ear. “your bullet, bullet, bullet,” he hums gently into her ear, “i’ll take it anytime,” he kisses her again, and again, and again.

junho only lets her question linger for awhile just to keep her hanging. “i do like you a lot.” he confirms, his hands find their way to the straps of her dress, fingers ghosting down the slope of her shoulders to slide them down. he pauses to look at her for a moment, his words suddenly feeling heavy but all so true. he thinks back to their first rendevous together, a night concentrated on only getting each other off, far too lust driven to really label it as ‘romantic’.

“  You’re awful at this. Have you never seen a girl cry?  ” When Shizuku doesn’t hear the door close, her embarrassment turns into anger. “ You have two options, either leave or come in. Either way, close the door, I’d rather not let anyone else see me like this.  ” She angrily wipes at her cheeks and grows more frustrated when she sees traces of her makeup against the back of her hand. Shizuku has always done her best with what life has given her, in order to do so she would keep her emotions under a tight lock and key. Nevertheless, there were days that Shizuku cannot clearly see the path in front of her and unexpectedly today was one of those days. Rehearsals had been awful, not because she made a mistake, but because she couldn’t keep her emotions in check. She didn’t think that performing on stage for the first time would inspire the same anticipation and anxiety to grow within her the same way her first competition had. After recognizing what the surge of emotions meant, Shizuku had started to panic. She immediately rushed into the nearest empty room before squatting down and pressing her forehead against her knees. She knew that these moments of happiness and anticipation only lead to ruin.

Shizuku’s head is filled with a constant stream of questions that never seem to rest. The most prominent of these questions would be ‘what am I doing?’ She knows she sounded rude, but she’s too embarrassed to apologize for her tone of voice. The last time Shizuku had experienced this predicament, she had promised that she would never feel this conflicted again. Isn’t sixteen is a little too young to have your dreams crushed? Back then, she had still believed that she would always be part of the dancesport community. She had believed that with determination and a good hip surgery she would still be a dancesport competitor until she reached the age of seventy. Shizuku cries even harder at how unbelievably naive and hopeful she had been.

At that time, she had even made her partner, Kazuya promise that they would stop at nothing to become world champions. Sadly, they hadn’t expected Kazuya to get injured, nor for the injury to reoccur again and again. When Kazuya retired from the competitive scene,  a small part of her had felt guilty. Guilty, for she knew how hard it was for her partner to give up the one thing made him feel alive. Guilty, for she would rather see Kazuya walk without the aid of his cane than to see him dance again. She still carries that guilt with her even now, sometimes she would use it as motivation when training gets hard. Initially, Shizuku didn’t think that the end of her competitive career would come a year after Kazuya’s did. It’s very common for dancers to change partners all the time. In spite of this, Shizuku hadn’t prepared herself for the changes. Shizuku had to find out the hard way that not every leader had his familiarity, steadiness, and consideration. It became difficult to compete when her partnerships wouldn’t last for more than a few months. Ten years of pain and hard work had gone to waste. On the day she announced her retirement to coaches and colleagues, she had felt so unbearably small. “  I’m so stupid, so so stupid. A stupid, hopeful fool that never learns.  ” After all this time, she thought, how can I be back to where I started?

the question she asks resonates with him, sinks into his skin all while his feet remain placent where he’d fallen stiff. he’d definitely seen his mother cry many times, himself always the culprit, the source for her disappointment when she’d finally realized her son would never live up to her expectations. crying girls, no matter whom, always pull at his heartstrings — he knows she isn’t bluffing, but if she was, junho wouldn’t even mind — because there’s always been that soft spot in his heart that could never deny a woman in distress. maybe it’s his desire to please. 

there’s nothing but the sound of her sniffling and mumbled words to herself that fill the room when he closes the door behind him. everything feels empty around them, nothing but the sound of her to keep the room alive. there’s a lot to be asked about the situation, like the blatant why are you sitting in a room crying alone or do you need a tissue? — his mouth opens to begin asking the latter, but he’s stopped short when she begins to talk again. her words are foreign, incoherent to his ears. “hey, it’s alright,” he says after another look over his shoulder at the door to make sure it’s actually closed. squatting before her, junho gets a better look at her face; reddened, cheeks still wet from her amount of sobbing that’s slightly melted her eye makeup down the curve of her cheekbones. she’s tense, but he doesn’t blame her for her bluntness from before.