Chapter 24
Iwoke up with a migraine.
It happened sometimes when the seasons changed. Becka said it was because I was secretly a weather witch – whatever that was. I think science more commonly explained it as something to do with changes in barometric pressure, or something.
Which made sense, as I heard rain outside before I even opened my eyes. It was hammering against the glass as if I had offended it by being so warm and dry.
Weather observations aside, it meant I woke up in a foul mood. I didn’t regularly get migraines, but when I did, they were bad.
I rolled over in bed and away from the watery light pouring in through curtains and grabbed my phone. I pulled the duvet up over my head, cocooning myself in the last few minutes of the morning’s peace.
What I saw had me shooting upright, throwing the duvet off and shouting, “Fuck!”
A loud tap at my door startled me. “Language!” Dad called, and a moment later I heard him descending the stairs, whistling a merry tune.
“Fuck!” I said, in a whisper. I swung my legs out of bed, refocusing on my phone, the screen positively overflowing with notifications.
I’d long ago set Google alerts for any topic related to ‘Jihoon’ and ‘dating’, but the vast majority of alerts I got were mostly just rehashing old theories, and even then, it was increasingly sporadic.
Not so, today.
It wasn’t clear where the best place to start was, so I just began opening tabs and skimming, trying to gain a clearer picture as I consumed more and more information, much of it overlapping and contradictory.
GVibes’ Jihoon BETRAYED? Lee Hyejin Spotted on Secret Dinner Date with Sol8’s Taeyang!
The world of K-pop EXPLODES as secret love triangle is exposed!
Lee Hyejin’s Dinner Date Sparks Cheating Allegations – Again!
Vibers and Beautys CLASH over cheating allegations
Jihoon & Hyejin Silent Amid Exploding Fan War – Are They Protecting Each Other, or Hiding the Truth?
And my personal favourite:
Taeyang treats Hyejin to a romantic meal – Here’s what they ate!
Some of the tabloids were injecting photos of Jihoon into the articles, most were old ones, but some were more recent, and obviously deliberately chosen to back up their narrative, because in them, Joon looked tired.
Always put together, but his face, his expression… it was telling the story they wanted.
The more I read, the more I felt pity for Lee Hyejin, who – as far as I could tell – had done nothing to deserve this latest round of vitriol.
Tae and Joon were both being painted as the love struck victims in Hyejin’s narcissistic game of cat and mouse. Two tragic men both vying for the prize of her hand in some bizarre stand off.
The main narrative largely seemed to be that she had long been accepted as Joon’s secret girlfriend and this latest scandal proved that she was an unfaithful harlot.
Naturally, the fandom for PYT – Beautys – were furious, calling Tae a liar and a womaniser, and Joon… well, they weren’t kind to Joon either. In their eyes, his crimes were numerous and largely stemming from his apparent refusal to come out and deny a relationship between him and Hyejin.
Detached from the situation I was able to see this for the circular argument it was and also admire the lengths to which they’d leap.
On the other hand, everyone was equally furious that Jihoon didn’t just announce that he and Hyejin were, in fact, dating.
It was a true case of being damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Taeyang was being bandied about as a philandering play boy, but apparently even he didn’t deserve to play second fiddle to Jihoon.
What made the last bit worse was the regularity in which Jihoon and Taeyang were openly compared.
It was no secret that Sol8 had been modelled after GVibes due to their massive success.
Sol8 was often referred to as the little brothers of GVibes, and Joon and Tae seemed to be compared more often than not.
They both suffered from a criminal case of good looks, were both often somewhat regarded as outsiders due to Tae being raised in Australia and Joon spending some years in the States.
Secretly, I harboured the suspicion that this comparison was one of the reasons Jihoon didn’t like Tae, because when you’re constantly being pitted against someone in competition, there had to be a winner.
I did appreciate that Solars – the fandom for Sol8 – mainly seemed to be trying to debunk the whole thing by sharing the unedited photos where Tae and Hyejin could clearly be seen as part of a group.
Already exhausted, I thew my phone down on the bed and dropped my head into my hands.
For several minutes, I just sat there, taking deep breaths as my mind raced, trying to piece it together and anticipating the response all the sides would need to put out.
By now, I knew better than to call Joon directly. He was more than likely sequestered in a board room, and I knew intimately how that would go, so instead I sent him a message.
Before it even went through, I knew I wouldn’t hear back from him, so instead, I went to find something to do.
Me
Are you okay? What can I do to help?
I sent two more messages throughout the day, but the only time I heard back was a brief message to say he’d call me later.
By the time I crawled into bed, he hadn’t. I tried to not overthink it, but it was hours before I fell asleep.
November 2nd
All night, I’d tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable no matter what. Anxiety churned in my gut, but for once it wasn’t an anxiety that stemmed from something I’d done. Quite the opposite.
For the first time since we’d been dating, what was going on with Jihoon had absolutely nothing to do with me, and in a weird way, that made it worse.
For every other scandal – the conference room, the rain photos, the ballroom photos – where we’d skirted the line of discovery, it had been me and Joon against the world. Together.
But this… this was Joon. I wasn’t involved. I wasn’t even in the country.
Far from feeling any measure of relief, it felt immeasurably worse, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
It might have been because I hated the thought of Joon dealing with it on his own. He’d been struggling for months. He’d denied it, but I saw the cracks in his carefully constructed mask.
It also might have been because it was yet again more rumours about him and Lee Hyejin.
While I knew there was nothing going on, I was adult enough to admit I hated that he, or the company, hadn’t just come out and denied any connection between the two of them.
It was plain to see why they hadn’t: rumours increased revenue.
How did the saying go? Ah, yes. All publicity is good publicity.
It also could have been because somehow, this latest rumour completely removed me from the picture and replaced me with someone else. It was an ugly, dark thought, but it kept stabbing away at me throughout the day.
By midday, I was a wreck.
Mum and Dad had gone out for a socially distanced walk with a local cancer support group, and they wouldn’t be back for hours. Somehow without them, the house felt like a cavern. I was just wandering around from room to room, rattling around like a ghost.
When my phone rang, it startled me so badly that I jumped, banging my knee into the side of a cabinet.
“Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I howled as I hopped over to the nearest chair.
I pulled out my phone, not bothering to look at the screen before sliding it up to accept the call.
“Baby, hi,” I breathed, trying to disguise the pain throbbing in my leg.
“Wow, Pom, I didn’t realise our relationship had progressed to pet names.”
I stopped moving, maybe even stopped breathing, for a few moments.
“Tae,” I said, not a question.
“Yeah, honey, how are you?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You started it, sweetcheeks.
“I did no– ” I took a breath. “You know what, never mind. What do you want, Tae?”
“I wanted to see if you were doing okay.” His voice had lost the edge of laughter it always seemed to resonate with, but the warmth was still there.
“What? Why wouldn’t I be?”
A pause.
“Well,” he hesitated. “What with the photos and all…”
“It really doesn’t effect me,” I bit out, rubbing my tender knee.
“Right. Sure. Yeah, it’s just… it does, though. Doesn’t it?”
“Tae,” I sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way–”
“Too late,” he said cheerfully.
“–but what do you need?”
“Damn, Pom, you’re hard work, you know?”
“So I’ve been told,” I grumbled.
Tae sighed, and I felt like I could see him dragging a hand through his hair.
“Look, I know what people think of me. I know they reckon I’m this one-a-night playboy, and while that rep has it’s uses, do you know how fucking hard it is to make friends with someone who doesn’t just want something from you?
Most people, they only want the the performer.
Sometimes they want the playboy. They’re not interested in who we actually are, only who they think we are. ”
Without warning, my mind flashed back to another time, on a beach more than five thousand miles away.
“Sometimes it’s hard to know who wants to know you and who wants to know the idol.”
“Hell, Pom. You don’t seem to want any variation of me.” He laughed, and once again I found my lips inadvertently quirking upwards.
“And yet, here you are.” I quipped.
He sighed again. “Here I am.” He was quiet for a moment. “Look, I know this is probably a little weird. I just sorta felt like we were similar, you know?”
“In what way?” I asked curiously.
“Two commonwealth kids in a foreign land, struggling to fit in.”
I made an unladylike sound.
“You fit in there far more than I ever did,” I said wryly, rolling my jeans up to inspect the damage. Barely a bruise.
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it,” he said so quietly that I wondered if he’d meant me to hear.