Chapter 6
Time seemed to have slowed since I’d come home. I wouldn’t say ‘moved home’. Moving seemed an antithesis to what I was currently doing, which was variations of waiting.
Waiting for it to be a good time to call Joon.
Waiting to not feel guilty about leaving.
Waiting to figure out what the hell I was going to do once everything settled down.
It felt like I’d been part of a story that had ended, a character in a book that had gone off chapter. I was paused. Off scene, in the margins of my own life.
I was beginning to realise I wasn’t very good at taking things one day at a time.
I always wanted a timescale to work with, a set amount of days to endure something before I could move on.
But there was no timescale here. Mum would take as long as she needed to recover.
This global virus would probably complicate everything until it no longer did, and I would have to learn patience.
It frustrated me because it felt like I was starting again – again.
I’d already done the long-distance thing with Jihoon.
I’d already endured a job I didn’t enjoy, and my reward had been Korea, with Jihoon, and yeah, admittedly I didn’t particularly enjoy the role I’d had at ENT, but it was part of the bigger picture.
Or, was it? Had it actually given me anything?
On reflection, I wasn’t really sure what I’d gotten out of it. I supposed it might look relevant on my resume.
I snorted. Relevant for what? What the fuck was I doing?
I leant my forehead against the window, feeling the cool glass against my skin, helping to ground me a little in the present. Slowing down the spiral of my thoughts.
Mum was having a nap, so we were trying to be quiet, which meant dad was downstairs reading the newspaper, while I was upstairs, sitting on my window seat, looking at the main road.
Calling it a main road was probably a bit generous, as my folks lived on the outskirts of a village in Cumbria. Traffic was never exactly heaving around here.
But even so, I’d begun to notice that it seemed quieter than I remembered. I only saw the occasional car go past. The only traffic I’d seen regularly was the postie, or the supermarket delivery vans.
I’d been sat there, mindlessly staring at the green hills in the distance for so long, that when my phone rang, it felt like I had to drag myself up from semi-unconsciousness.
I looked at the screen before answering.
Becka.
“Babes,” she sounded harried. “Are you okay?”
I frowned at her question, automatically giving myself a mental pat down, checking for injuries I’d been unaware of, but finding none.
“Yes. I think so, why?” I asked suspiciously.
“Shit,” Becka exhaled. “You haven’t seen them.” It wasn’t a question.
My heart seemed to simultaneously sink even as it skipped a few beats. Oh, for fucks sake, what now?
“Seen what?” I asked, clinging onto a sense of calm I suspected was about to be shattered.
“The photos,” Becka groaned.
“What photos?” I asked, heart beginning to hammer.
“Oh, babes,” Becka sighed. “The ball-”
“The ball?” The words burst from my mouth as I launched upwards, banging my head on a little hanging cat marionette my parents had brought back from a trip to Venice. The wooden struts clacked angrily as though in protest of my clumsiness.
“Shit!” I bit out.
I’d been peripherally aware they existed. Hana had said as much that last day we’d sat in the canteen at ENT, but so much had happened since then… I’d forgotten to keep tabs on it.
Becka groaned again. “Not just those. Look, I’m not playing twenty questions, Ky, just get your laptop and sit down.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I lumbered over to the little dressing table I had been using as a desk, and sat down, opening my laptop, and impatiently waiting for it to wake up.
“I’ve sent you the link,” Becka said, and sure enough, a notification popped up on my desktop, directing me to a well-known tabloid.
Heart pounding, I clicked the link. The page loaded, and it was immediately obvious what Becka had meant.
“Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuck…”
“Yes. Oh fuck,” Becka replied, flatly.
My mind flashed back to when I’d first moved to Seoul, and Becka had called to tell me about the conference room footage. This was such a close mirror that I experienced a moment of déjà vu. I had to look around my room to ground myself in the present.
“Are you still there?” Becka’s voice filtered through time to reach me here, in Cumbria, not Seoul.
I closed my eyes against the sudden pang that knifed through me. I cleared my throat.
“Yes.”
I opened my eyes, and willed them to focus on the screen in front of me.
Splashed across the front page, arranged like the photos of a crime scene, were a series of grainy pictures – clearly taken on a phone camera, from a distance – of a boy and a girl, standing in the rain in the middle of the street, kissing.
The boy wore a hat, and the girl had her hands on the lapels of his jacket, pulling him down to her.
The most damning of all though was the shot where the girl had pulled away, no longer obscuring the boy’s face. A face that was unmistakably Jihoon’s.
In the picture, he smiled down at the brown haired girl, both of them thoroughly soaked through with rain, and seemingly uncaring of their surroundings.
And even though the photo quality was poor, you could see it on his face, in the way his hands held her. They were a couple. Undeniably.
Oh, shit.