Chapter 28
The start of a new year always felt strangely anticlimactic. The festive high faded, and you were left with the realisation that the new year was just another day in the same cold, dark stretch of winter.
People went back to work, decorations were taken down, the news still reported covid figures, although the importance of these had lessened to the point where it was no longer top of the news cycle.
The world was moving on.
I never heard back from him. He didn’t call again. Maybe he didn’t even know I’d heard his message.
Maybe he didn’t care.
I saw the post by accident. I’d muted his social media account a few weeks after– well. After.
I couldn’t bring myself to block him, which was how I came to see the post. It was big news in the music community, and my social media algorithms saw fit to push it right to the top of my feed.
He had posted a clip of one of the songs from his album, which was due out later in the month.
It was the song he’d played for me in the sound booth on the day of my interview with ENT, more than a year ago.
Except, it wasn’t. This version was slowed down, and instead of the synth sounds and electric guitar, he’d used an acoustic one.
He sang in English. I almost didn’t recognise the song.
When I’d originally heard it, he’d sung the entire song in Korean.
Hearing it now was like hearing it for the first time, and I wasn’t prepared.
It was only a short clip, forty-two seconds, but for those scant moments, I was yanked through the screen until I was there with him, in a dark room, sitting on the floor, watching as he played the guitar and sang the words to a song that had taken on a completely different meaning.
Hold onto me, even if it’s just for tonight
Don’t let me fade
Pull me closer, like you did before
Hold on, until we can’t anymore
The weight on my chest felt so heavy I struggled with the effort of every breath.
It was only the chorus, but there was so much in those short bars that it left me feeling bereft. I was scorched from the inside out, and the depth of my reaction surprised me, because honestly, I’d thought I was healing.
Seeing him was bad enough, but hearing him?
I was not okay, and in a way, it was a relief to not pretend that I was, because it was quite clear I wasn’t there. Not yet.
I closed my social media and went for a walk.
The next morning, the video had been removed.
January 29th
It’s Official: Baek Jihoon and Lee Hyejin Are Dating, Agencies Confirm.
The news hit the public consciousness that morning.
I sat on a bench in a public park, watching ducks fight over soggy bread as it floated on the surface of the pond. I couldn’t move.
It had started to drizzle a while back, more like damp wind than actual raindrops. Gentle plinking sounds that provided a monotonous backing track as droplets pelted against my raincoat. It protected me from the rain, but my fingers were starting to go numb from cold.
I didn’t move, because I knew that if I did, if I even shifted slightly, I would fall apart in a literal sense.
Because surely that’s what happened when everything, absolutely everything in you shatters. It falls apart, doesn’t it?
I’d thought I was doing well. I’d been so proud of myself. I’d made it to lunchtime yesterday without thinking of him once. Freelancing was going well, I was keeping up with my uni work. Life was ticking over.
Except, I think it had been ticking like a bomb.
Which is why I couldn’t move now.
Breath moved in and out of me in steady, calm streams, but the action was manual. Every inhale, every exhale was a conscious decision, and it really felt like I could just…. Stop. Just choose not to, and for a moment… I considered it.
The thought jerked me out of autopilot, and a keening, quiet wail escaped. I put my fist to my mouth, desperately trying to reclaim the numb, but calm exterior I’d let slip.
I tried not to close my eyes, because every time I did, I saw the headlines, the photos. Felt the way my heart cracked so solidly in my chest that I heard the pieces shearing apart.
Fans lose it as Jihoon and Hyejin go public — agency says “They’re happy they can finally declare their love.”
K-pop stars Jihoon and Hyejin confirm relationship after years of rumours
“We knew it!” Netizens reactions to the confirmed news of JiJin – K-Pop’s lovebirds
It could have all been just another baseless rumour, had it not been for the pictures.
Nothing hidden, no ambiguity. He and Hyejin had boldly walked through Incheon airport together, holding hands.
It had all the subtlety of a public declaration, for surely that’s exactly what it was intended to be. They’d even been wearing rings.
No more rumours.
It hadn’t stopped there, though.
It had gotten so much worse. Had it just been the dating confirmation, I might have been able to bear it. Now, I wondered how I’d ever move past it.
I wondered if it was possible to fix what had been so irrevocably broken in me.
Coming clean! Spokesperson for ENT confirms Lee Hyejin IS the now-infamous ‘dark-haired girl! Shocking revelation!
I had been erased.
It didn’t matter that the world had never known my identity, because even that had been taken from me.
Now, I wasn’t even a mysterious rumour in his history, because my history had been replaced with the image of someone else. It didn’t matter that I immediately understood the logic in accepting the narrative, because whatever relationship they had now, had over written the one we’d had.
He had allowed that.
It wasn’t that I had been holding onto the hope that we’d somehow come back from this – because truthfully that hope had died in me the moment he’d changed his number – it’s that he saw replacing me with her as an acceptable price.
I’d always known he would probably move on before I could, because I’d always harboured the suspicion, deep down, that I felt more for him than he had for me.
So, seeing him with her… it made sense. That it also confirmed what Hana had hinted at was just another hurt I would have to learn to live with.
I’d add it to the list of wounds I carried under my skin, always just a hair's breadth from the surface.
Lee Hyejin: The dark-haired girl. The girl in the rain.
It’s like I was never there. As if none of it had ever happened, and the thought that it would all fade into a memory that only I could ever corroborate terrified me.
That was why I couldn’t get off the bench. Because if I did, if I tried to move… I would fall apart.
I didn’t know how to move on from this. I suspected I might never, and that was almost a more comforting thought than being forgotten.
But maybe in the meantime, I could learn to pretend.