to you, with love.

jiyong’s tongue ghosts over his lips, the flesh tugged between a set of ivories quickly after. words escape him, and so do the motives that led him here. suddenly, he’s not sure why he’s come to her. he’s just glad that she’s opened the door. that she’s let him in. 

june, with seolhee. ( @idsophia )

loneliness is a vagrant, settling into places like between her fingers or the gaps in her rib cage. or behind her teeth. in her eyes, her smile, her empty apartment. it turns insomnia into a war fought beneath her skin. every step she takes outside the confines of her temporary home (what’s a home with invisible bars and invisible guards, eyes watching her every move? what’s a home when it feels just a like a prison?) a metaphorical gunshot. this late night blues, it makes her hungry, desperate for a distraction.

what sophia doesn’t expect when she opens the door is for reprieve to come in the shape of a boy she tells herself she’s forgotten.

this is the prelude to tragedy: her breath hissed out in time to stuttered heartbeats, the nervous staccato drumming of her fingers against the door and making eye contact with a boy who was always capable of seeing through her.

she thinks he’ll say something. anything. he doesn’t. (she doesn’t either.)

time slows to a crawl, pulses between them. she waits. and waits. and stares right back.

but his eyes--they leave a wound. a perpetual ache, like a pinch to her skin. sophia doesn’t know what he wants when he looks at her like this—relieved and open-faced. none of those sinister sneers gracing faces whose names she can’t recall when her scandal broke and she was nearly crucified for daring to be human, for falling in love. no, he looked nothing like the vultures hidden behind cameras, waiting for a juicy soundbite, waiting for her to slip up, waiting for her to crumble.

nothing like them. like juwon with his lips curled into a knowing smirk and wolf eyes. 

it makes her wary. afraid. it makes her want.

sophia looks at him and wonders if this is what writers mean when they say heartbreak, heartache, heart anything is hard to mend. because falling in love (falling out of love, or so she tells herself. over and over again) shouldn’t feel like starvation, withdrawal symptoms showing up as trembling hands and his name pressed behind her teeth. she thinks she’s over it–the addiction. to him, to them. but moving on isn’t supposed to be a heated kiss done in the darkness of a closet and riding the knife edge of disaster. it shouldn’t feel like after-midnight saudade either—a trip down memory lane in the way her hand brushes across the bed (his side), catching on cold sheets. it shouldn’t be a reminder of his absence in the phantom imprint of his body. of warmth no longer found and no longer there. a body long gone.

and yet, here he is: in the flesh, smiling at her. 

> where would you go?

the fan on the floor whirs methodically, stirring the pages of the notebook splayed open in her lap and strands of hair against her cheek. for a moment, sophia closes her eyes and imagines meadows and fields of yellow canola flowers instead. imagines herself on a blanket, spread-eagle, her face turned up at the sun. but restlessness feels like pinpricks of needles at the base of her spine, at the curve of her shoulders, the bend behind her knees. paranoia slips in through the cracks of the blinds, turns into shadows dancing along her bedroom walls, streaking across her arms, her legs.

she doesn’t like this feeling. of feeling trapped, of feeling empty. melancholy a haunting when the rest of the world is asleep and she’s wide awake, her mind running a mile a minute. unable to rest. unable to quiet. unable to slow down.

she thinks about how loneliness is a plague. she can’t reconcile the feeling of emptiness–that gaping void–with anything but dull ache, a persistent churning in her belly; one that roils and burns whenever midnight dial tone rings in her ears before she hears the beep signifying the end of an unrecorded voicemail, when she comes back to the dorm at a quarter after two and all that greets her is silence, when she looks someone in the eyes and sees nothing but sympathy. (it’s pitiful, isn’t? their eyes say. poor thing. you’re so lonely, aren’t you?)

she wonders when the self-isolation started, wonders if it was out of subconscious habit that she started turning away from outstretched hands and shadowed gazes. wonders if it’s her own damned fault for finding herself shivering under the weight of three layers in the dead of the night with no one for company but the ghost of a boy on the other line. (was he even real at all?) she wonders what he would say if she told him she was afraid–of becoming attached, of becoming dependent. she wonders but doesn’t ask.

because fear can do a lot of things–like turn a person greedy. selfish. terrible.

it’s why she says nothing. why she waits until everything peaks. and boils over.

lukewarm and tragic.

「항상조이」: wherever the ocean will take me. 「항상조이」: wherever lim seolhee can exist. 

「five minutes later. 」

「항상조이」: wherever you are.

「later still. 」

“you look tired.” he tells her, stating the obvious, making eye contact with her so she knows he can see right through her, so she knows there’s no way she can lie to him and just get away with it if she even tries. “what’s troubling you?” he wonders, free hand reaching over to let his fingertips gently brush against the keys, until they reach for her hand, takes it in his. “tell me.”

it takes a lot for her to say we’re still here. and by a lot, she means–overlooking the too-many-to-count instances when people took and took and took and then left her when they’ve had enough, of being stretched thin, growing pains, filling in empty spaces and empty silences with emptier smiles.

naturally, things come and go in waves. time is a riptide, after all; here one moment and gone the next. people were the same. what they leave behind when they go mere traces: a hand-me-down hoodie, an old cellphone key chain, movie stubs, faded polaroids from that day of that month of that year–and then some. they’re memories, filled to the brim, lurking somewhere in the back of her mind. always. sometimes forgotten, often times remembered. somewhere in limbo until insomnia kicks in or when sadness chokes her in her sleep.

sophia knows she can’t pick and choose her constants. people come and go–whether she wanted them to or not. it’s how she learns not to build a home in people. because the thing about building a home out of flesh and bone is that they could be a million miles away or next door and still feel strange and out of place.

not seokyung, though.

he’s her life jacket in an ocean of people. when the waves of life get a little too volatile and the high tides come crashing in, sweeping her away, she knows if she reaches out a hand, she’ll meet warmth. it’s why she could drop everything at a snap of a finger. it’s why all it takes is for him to take her hand in his (coffee momentarily forgotten. not even her go-to caramel latte with extra caramel syrup can ease the phantom pain and the midnight blues) and she finds herself on the brink of shattering.

“Your singing is pretty today,” a poor attempt at making light-hearted conversation, but it isn’t as if it’s untrue. But Mona’s never been one to ease into anything, so she bites the bullet and hopes that the blowback doesn’t tear her apart. “You know you can talk to me about it, right? I mean, not that I don’t know what happened between you and Jiyong — and it wasn’t fair for him to do that to you.” She sighs, the internal reminder to kick Jiyong in the ass more pressing than ever.

May ‘19 — @idsophia

symptoms of shattering:

it’s the feeling of perpetual suffocation, of feeling backed into a corner with no way out–a maelstrom of anxiety, sorrow, self-pity, and fear–ringed like a noose around her neck, pulling tight and yanking her body straight up like a limp rag doll. she feels out of place these days–a certifiable ghost haunting the studios and the practice rooms; voice hoarse and half-gone, her body worn ragged and aching bone deep (soul deep). she hasn’t felt like an outlier–neither here nor there or anywhere–in a long time. the bite of loneliness stings, tastes bitter. ashy. she’s but slipping in-between nowadays, sliding silently into the invisible traces left behind by her members–in the shoes stacked neatly on the rack by the door, in the borrowed hoodie (mona’s probably) tossed carelessly on the foot of her bed, in the dirty dishes piled up high in the sink, in the empty fridge, in the crumpled post-it notes in the garbage (her neat handwriting in glitter gel pen hidden in the creases).

she’s gotten so used to running full speed ahead or lagging half a step behind what she’s come to call her second family that sophia forgets she’s supposed to be walking beside them. hand in hand, smiling. laughing. crying. together.

the realization that she’s turned herself into a stranger (that she did this. all of it) breaks her heart. she’s standing dazed on the edge of the set, picture perfect but for the storm brewing in her eyes. rigid, on edge, and with fingers digging into the crook of her elbows, mona’s voice breaks through the haze. makes her heart squeeze.

“i know.” her mouth opens and she forgets how to ask for forgiveness. forgets how to shape how she really feels into coherent words. trembling, all she can do is stand there with her shoulders hunched over. as if the weight of it all feels like the world pressing in. the guilt bending her spine as she struggles from collapsing under it all–the expectations, mona’s quiet reassurance, the truth, her own mistakes brought to light: her lies and half-truths, the traces of him, of what they did boiling over.

he looks at her again. swallows. “sorry.” something else is supposed to follow, but his mouth clamps shut. 

jiyong tugs at his collar. he needs air. 

vulnerability is the lull between a shaky inhale and a shakier exhale, in the curved comma of a weighted pause, in the trail of ellipses after his voice cuts through the haze. it’s the distilled quiet lingering heavy after his apology drops, hanging between them. heavy and precarious. (she shouldn’t have talked. she should’ve kept her mouth shut. should’ve left him behind.). she finds fragility tucked in the way his head’s lowered, almost defeated; in the way he stares, tortured; a wealth of words caged behind teeth.

their shared history--(un)soft and wretched and unresolved all at once--crackles between them.

she tells herself: this isn’t violence.

not in the way she looks back at him: calculating, scrutinizing, dissecting — as if her gaze alone was sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone, straight to his heart. beneath the worry and the flicker of still-there affection, she finds resentment (for herself? for him?) is a newfound feeling churning at the pit of her stomach. it makes her just a little too defensive — a little raw, like an open wound waiting to be prodded. she hates it. hates this. hates herself. (she shouldn’t be here. she can’t be here. it’s dangerous. he’s dangerous.)

and yet, her feet refuse to move, rooted in place; her heartstrings tugged once more.

“why do you do this to yourself?” the worry twists her words soft, phrasing it in a lilt that tapers at the end, muffled as they were by fingertips pressed to her lips. as if she only then realized how presumptuous it sounded and tried to catch the words a little too late. 

this isn’t violence, she tells herself once more. almost as though she were trying to convince herself that this--them--meeting wouldn’t end in an implosion. but she feels it. a tremor at the base of her spine, how her body feels heavy, too warm, fraying at the edges. feels like she’s dangling on the edge of something--l’appel du vide in the most visceral sense.

she closes her eyes and tries to breathe. collects herself in small measures: her body of trepidations, unwinding; tension easing from the line of her shoulders, her spine unfurling. these are the pieces she leaves behind: the barest hint of a smile, a contemplative tip of her head, and sad eyes. 

“i’m sorry too,” whisper soft and tremulous. half plea, half sigh. a surrender all at once.

this isn’t violence, she thinks once more to be sure. it isn’t.

he grabs a garish looking scarf from the closest stand and wraps it around his neck. “quick, we better complete our costume before the owner completes it for us. you know, as runaways we have to stick to a tight budget.”    

"does it matter?” the question spills like a slow drawl ringed in the barest of confusion. she means to say that it doesn’t. that family was family--blood or otherwise. but what follows is a toothy grin as sophia watches minsoo fumble with his spanish, feeling the corner of her lips tug higher and higher the more flustered he got. it ends in a peal of laughter, bell-like and barely muffled with a dip of her head and the back of her hand. despacito shatters her defenses and she nearly melts into him as minsoo leads her towards the stall in the back of the shop. 

“i can’t,” she barely manages as she struggles to catch her breath, cheeks pinked in her effort to hold back her giggles at his expense. “d-despacito--” it’s her undoing and something inside of her crumbles away, even as her shoulders shudder under the force of her laughter, her fingers locked around his wrist. a minute passes while sophia struggles to piece together her composure. eyes bright, she finally manages to catch her breath, tilting her head up to beam at minsoo. “not bad at all,” she’s wholly serious, save for the twitch of her lips, and the way her eyes curve into half moons. a sign of happiness, of amusement. she feels feather-light, carefree. 

with the setting sun behind him, she is reminded of clumsy hands, the echo of too much laughter, and summers in busan. like this, she wonders if this means something. if he means something. she stares. maybe, a little too hard. a little too long. and then, it’s his voice and the flash of bright red that tears her away from the memory of sticky fingers, a sting on her knees, and waves lapping around her ankles. 

“the party’s outside.” it’s hardly a whisper — a weak utterance, one that trembles before her judgment. submission. 

april, with seolhee. ( @idsophia )

this isn’t the first time she’s been sleepless. peaceful sleep’s but a foreign concept to her lately, her days and nights forever plagued by an impending sense of terror. it’s a byproduct of being overworked, she supposes. insomnia, the sister of paranoia; a result of being pushed to the brink and lingering on the knife edge of fatigue. the party was an afterthought, a decision made on a whim. she’d only wanted to get away. perhaps, let loose in a way that would make her forgive and forget how her father’s voice had growled static across the line, miles and miles away. just as he has always been all these years. (you’re so selfish, he’d said before the sorrow could swallow her whole, don’t you want me to be happy?) what of us? she’d thought, the words crowding the tip of her tongue but refused to spill. what about mom? what about me? she’d ended the call before she could get answers. she’s not sure she wants to know. not now. perhaps, not ever.

she loses track of time like this: her feet takes her away from the smell of alcohol, from the hubbub of bodies swaying, grinding, mingling, and down the hall, her mind elsewhere. she stumbles once in her too high heels before she kicks them off, hooks fingers into the straps and pads barefoot down the hall. going somewhere, going nowhere. aimless and distracted. in her daze, she finds herself in the coatroom. somewhere her mind deems quiet and safe. perfect for her to find solitude, for her to cry if need be. no one will notice. no one will know. 

something is pulsing. it might’ve been the echoes of the afterparty still in its throes down the hallway or her heart — she doesn’t know. but the door shuts quietly behind her and the noise cuts off and all that plummets is silence. she’s not drunk. the one drink she’d donned in a burst of anger did nothing to calm her. she supposes it must be a trick of fate or a cruel sense of humor, but all it takes is the sight of jiyong in the corner to scatter her nerves. make her nervous.

she almost closes her eyes. almost lets herself be vulnerable. his voice breaks the silence. breaks the moment. she doesn’t surrender. not yet.

“i know it’s late, but if we’re going to be tourists, i want to look the part for however long. like method actors.” 

she used to liken their brief encounters to being stretched thin. as though, every backward glance or polite smile at some shared place or another tugs at her heartstrings. her mother used to say soulmates were born of a single star and that when two halves meet again, whenever and wherever that may be, she’ll recognize them in a heartbeat, in a ripple that calms her soul. sophia finds peace in the shape of a boy with gentle hands and kind eyes. his warm smile fills empty space; fragments of forgotten memories spark like minute film reels played backward in her mind. somewhere in limbo, she knows none of this is new. minsoo isn’t new. isn’t a stranger. he is living memory, filled to the brim with the scent of sea salt and home. 

realer now than he’d ever been.

“you won’t lose me,” it’s punctuated by clumsy hands and a finger hooked shyly through a belt loop at the small of his back. she hopes minsoo doesn’t notice the trembling or the way she curls into herself when someone knocks into her shoulder, sending her stumbling into him. she’s too much laughter then, tumbling soft and a little unsure. a little awkward. an unspoken question poised in the slip of her hand into his. tentative and loose. “buddy system?” she thinks it’s strange. how his presence can coax the gentleness out of her, melt the fear with a flash of his grin. it’s blinding and sophia almost lifts a hand to shield her eyes. a callback to another time and a younger her. 

she doesn’t wait for his answer though, distracted as she is by the point of his finger and the thought of pretending to be someone she’s not. a half-step forward brings her to his side and another has her leading, fingers squeezing. “c’mon, slowpoke~” tugging freely and at two steps ahead, a sudden breeze catches sophia in the face, sending strands of hair spilling over her shoulder and streaking across her cheek. laughter bursts, catches some curious eyes and corresponding smiles from passersby and roaming locals. “let’s go, let’s go!” she’s still laughing when she pulls him forward, not the slightest bit apologetic, to a rack of straw hats and gaudy scarves ahead.

“so what’s the concept for today--siblings on the run or young couple on their honeymoon?” the joke comes on the heels of a hiccup of a giggle and cut short by indecision forming furrowed brows and a purse of her lips. she doesn’t even realize the owner is watching, amused, until he chortles, rapid-fire spanish accompanying the press of a pretty sundress and a wide-brimmed straw hat into her arms. muy bonita, señorita! is all she catches amidst a wave of hands and abbreviated gestures between the clothes and her petite frame. “ah...gracias. one...” hesitating, she bites her lip and tilts her head at minsoo. a silent plea. “un momento, por favor.” 

the kind of happy that can ebb the smile off hani’s face because… in a perfect world, they wouldn’t need to steal time to be together; they’d just be together always.

outside, there’s pale rose on the horizon; the sky streaked in lavender and burnt orange. 

it reminds her first of the delicate petals of hani’s tutu back when girlhood was about growth spurts (or in sophia’s case, lack thereof. something hani has never stopped making fun of her for) and too long limbs in an overworked body trying to mold itself into something elegant and ethereal. reminds her of the flush of her cheeks the one time hani had leaned in close and kissed her sweet (”just because,”  she’d wondered then if it was just an excuse to touch, to forget. if, by chance, those butterflies that fluttered a storm at the pit of her stomach was affection in disguise. she’d thought a whole lot of things when she’d been on the cusp of womanhood. but she could never remember if it was blossoming infatuation that had sophia tucking her face into the curve of her shoulder, fingers twining familiar, and hani’s laugh washing over her skin.) 

reminds her of all the times they would sneak onto the rooftop after practice to press shoulder to shoulder, watching the streets below them unwind, watching the sky unravel. they’d been all giggles then, stealing bites of candy from a bag stolen from under the trainer’s hawk eyes and divided up like rewards for a job well done to two girls who wanted to survive, to dream big. (”you and me against the world.”)

when sophia looks at hani now, she remembers the weight of empty promises she’d failed to keep, of hooked pinkies and holding hands. feels the distance that has formed between them, despite how close they are now. sophia with her finger tucked in between pages of a well-worn script and hani with her honey warm voice just by her ear. she hears the plea. the call for adventure. of yesteryears and what could’ve been’s. 

gets distracted by the way hani’s fingers slip into the spaces between hers. 

she looks at her and sees a world of possibilities. (”i want to go on a trip, some day. just the two of us. maybe a quite seaside town where the ocean meets the sky. where no one knows our names. somewhere. anywhere. will you come with me?”) there’s a scene painted blue in her eyes: the ocean wide before their feet, sand between their toes, and hani with her sun-brim smile knee deep in the water, watching and calling her name. 

“okay,” the pages rustle as she folds a corner down and fidgety hands feeling too empty leave it abandoned on the bed. when she reaches across for hani’s hand, palm to palm, there’s an echo of an age old promise in the curve of her lips and the warmth in her eyes. “let’s go.” she smooths the wrinkles of her dress down and pulls her backpack over her shoulder. picture perfect ready. let’s be nobodies in a sea of people. let’s be free. eat lots, laugh loud, and love gentle.

“let’s make the most of our time, yeah?” 

there was a bitter laugh that followed, but of course, sophia knows all about her waiting– she had a fair bit of doing so herself.

this industry steals pieces of her and she’s let it for the most part--all for the sake of chasing after a dream that still remains out of reach. it had stolen her innocence back when she’d just been that girl from busan with her saltwater hair and knee-length lace dresses. it ate her up from the inside out and spat her out in fragments. it had stolen her freedom when she’d been announced for CHERRY BOMB!’s final lineup. there, standing side by side with three firecracker girls, sophia had known then that she’d have to do whatever it took to find herself a niche, forge herself a path separate from her girls if she wanted to one day sing her own songs and write her own lyrics. the spotlight, she knew then, wasn’t meant to be shared amongst four completely different women--all with dreams of their own. then, the industry had robbed her privacy and her reputation when her dating scandal hit front page and, overnight, the public went on a witch hunt---pitchforks and all, determined to burn her at the stake for daring to fall in love. 

(she wonders if it was then that she realized how hollow she’s become. if, maybe, fame and this wretched industry wasn’t meant for a girl whose dreams started on the kitchen counter, an old vinyl playing in the background, and halmeoni’s voice a balm to her soul.)

she blinks and the city outside steals her too, snatching her mind right back to the glitz and glam and sooyeon’s picture perfect self sitting across from her, waiting for her to come back to herself. to pay attention. respond. 

“the people are hypocritical. greedy.” part huff, part whisper. it’s drowned out by the quiet tap tap tap of her index finger drumming a beat on the table beside her now lukewarm cup of tea. “i am too, though.” she wouldn’t be in seoul, in CHERRY BOMB!, if she wasn’t. and yet, regret tastes bitter, stings the back of her eyes at the thought of what it had been like before--when things had been simpler, when the people were kind, when her voice had soared, round and full and warm.

she’s forgotten what that was like--how to be happy. free.

her phone buzzes by her plate and sophia shifts her gaze from sooyeon’s face to the screen. a text message from her manager: you passed the first round. the second audition is next week at 11am. she thinks about her mother waiting at home, about missed calls and late night voicemails she can recite in her sleep. thinks about the promise she made to her months ago: i’ll be home for christmas. i promise we can celebrate together. just like old times. she thinks about how many promises she’s broken so far (she’s already lost count) and how many she has left to keep (not enough).

she shuffles closer at sophia’s proposition. ends up laughing as they crush their bodies together in a bid for warmth, one that sheer black stockings aren’t really built for. “use both.” eunsol decrees, pulls one hot pack out from sophia’s hand and presses it to the girls cheek. sophia stands shorter, even in her stage-ready heels (perhaps because eunsol’s in her own), eunsol ends up with a forearm propped against one of sophia’s shoulders as they talk. “pretty sure the stagehand is jealous.” eunsol decides, more joke than anything – her smile wry. 

there’s no words for this. this hellfire of an industry that steals the innocence from mere teenagers, breaking the bones of their youth and twisting them, morphing them, into something grotesquely ethereal and perfect. mere caricatures meant to be gazed upon and devoured by the eyes of the public. sophia had hoped that the road to stardom would be paved in glitter gold, the spotlights warm on her skin. reality had been much harsher and more a slap to the face than anything. this world of theirs was far from glamorous. it was wicked, bloody, and torturous. 

there’s no words strong enough to describe the years destruction and re-construction it took to stand on stage at a school festival of all things. she’d hoped cherry bomb! would’ve achieved a level of success that would save them from rookie venues like this one. had hoped the public would get to see them soar higher and perform bigger and better. but alas, she’s glued to eunsol’s side, dwarfed in a down jacket two sizes too big in freezing temperatures. 

“it’s meant to cater and entertain. i suppose our companies are, for a lack of better words, pandering to the bulk of today’s audiences. what better way to warm up the hearts of the public than to have pretty girls in short skirts and thin clothes dancing and singing to cheer students on? we’re supposed to be indestructible,” there’s grit nestled in there somewhere. a hint of dissatisfaction and a biting flash of sleep-depraved frustration making an appearance. from the corner of her eyes, she spots a stagehand looking up from the mic packs he’d been untangling to stay at them, gaze unreadable. she turns away, burrows closer to eunsol on the guise of seeking warmth, seeking shelter.