Chapter 5
The sun had barely slipped through my bedroom window when my alarm sounded, shaking me out of a sleep so deep that it took me several moments of looking around to remember where I was.
Before it could sound again, I reached over to grab my phone, and looked at the screen, confused.
Visa Expiration
Instantly, I was transported to another place, another time.
“You’re setting an alarm?” Jihoon smirked.
He was lying back against a mound of soft, white pillows, his arm thrown behind his head. He looked like a Greek God, and for a moment I allowed myself to become distracted by the wide expanse of skin on display.
“It helps me to have a visual reminder,” I protested, forcing my eyes away from my half-naked boyfriend, and back to my phone.
“Jagiya, if it gets to the point that your alarm goes off, we’ll be in the car racing to the airport.”
“Will we be running from the police?” I grinned.
Jihoon sat up, the muscles flexing beneath his skin in the most distracting way.
“I wouldn’t let them catch you,” he murmured, threading his fingers through my hair. “We’ll go on the run.”
“Like Bonnie and Clyde.”
He laughed and kissed me softly.
“You’re staying here with me, jagiya.”
I’d shed so many tears in the past week, that it was amazing I had any left, but they fell easily down my face now.
It had just gone 7 am. It would be around 3 pm in Seoul.
We hadn’t fallen into a routine yet, everything was too up in the air. Back when I’d lived in LA, we’d fallen into a pattern of carving time out of our days. Here it was sporadic and unsettled.
I hit call, using the front-facing mirror to quickly run my hand over my messy hair. Joon picked up almost immediately. He looked so happy to see me, that for a moment my heart lifted off the ground, and my lips curled into a smile that felt both natural, and yet disused.
“Jagiya,” he murmured, the word making everything feel like it was going to be okay.
“Hey, you,” I said quietly, conscious of the early hour.
Jihoon pulled the camera away from his face, enough for me to see that he was in the gym at ENT, the company logo emblazoned on the wall behind the weight rack he was sitting in front of. His forehead was beaded with sweat. He looked tired.
“I miss you,” he said.
I flinched at the sudden pinch in my chest.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He hung his head, his shoulders slumped for a moment before he ran a hand down his face.
“Ne,” he said nodding, but then, with a sigh, “ani.”
I tried to smile, but it slipped off my face.
“Which is it?”
Jihoon sighed. “I think it’s both. How are you?”
I shrugged. “The same. You’re in the gym.”
Normally, he only ever went in the mornings. It had been a habit he’d imposed on himself so he maintained a balance between his personal time, and anything he considered a part of his job.
“It’s the only thing I can do,” he said, “I don’t have to think in here.” His lips quirked, but it was a shadow of his usual, cocky smirk.
“You’ve always had more motivation than me. All I want to do is lie in bed and eat biscuits.”
For a moment, the clouds seemed to lift as we laughed. This would pass. We would be okay.
But, the laughter faded and we were still just staring at screens, a whole world between us.
“How’s your eomma? You said she was home?”
I’d texted him yesterday to let him know that my mum was back, but that pesky time difference…
In the beginning of our relationship, when thousands of miles had separated us, we’d fallen into the habit of staying connected by sending regular messages throughout the day.
Little snippets of inconsequential minutiae, like what we ate for lunch, what one of his members had done, or what we wanted to eat for dinner.
It was silly, but when your entire relationship took place between two phones, the little details mattered.
When I’d moved to Korea, the timing of each call and text hadn’t been important. Now that we were thousands of miles apart, again, our routine had shifted. Time zones had shifted. We were off-kilter, and out of practice.
“She’s better than I expected her to be.” I leaned back against my pillows. “But she’s in a lot of pain, even if she won’t admit it.”
She’d been up a lot last night; I’d heard her moving around, regularly accompanied by the soft rumble of my dad’s voice, though I hadn’t been able to make out the words.
“That must be upsetting.” Jihoon’s voice pulled my attention back to the screen.
“It’s worse for my folks,” I replied. “They live and die for each other. They’ll be upsetting each other with their different kinds of pain.”
Jihoon was silent for a time, regarding me in the way he sometimes did. Being silent in a moment where I needed to just be.
Eventually, he said, “I love you. I miss you. I want to say ‘I wish you were here’, but you need to be there.”
I sighed, because I understood. It was complicated. It had always been complicated.
“I wish we lived in a world where I could be there, with you.” As the words came out of my mouth, I realised I wasn’t just talking about a world where my mum was okay, I was also talking about a world where it would be okay for us to be together.
But we didn’t live in that world.
We lived with the world between us.