Chapter 46 #2
His touch stopped my racing mind, calmed the unsettled thrum that shivered through me, but despite it, I couldn’t focus on any one thing, going from one piece of information to another, alighting on it briefly.
Until –
Like a woollen thread snagging on a splinter of wood, my thoughts caught on something, rebounded and hit me in the gut.
“What about Lee Hyejin?” I said with such clarity you’d have thought I was at least in the right vicinity of my mind, instead of spiralling somewhere above it.
He’d very publicly dated her after we’d broken up. The one thing he wouldn’t do with me.
If what he was saying was true, how did he justify being with her, knowing how he felt about me? Was she some sort of rebound?
“Fake,” he blurted out
My mind screeched to a halt, caught on that one word.
“Fake?” I asked, raising a shaking hand to my forehead.
He nodded, emphatically. “It was–” he paused, searching for the word.
The mannerism he had of twirling his hand in the air, as though trying to snatch the word from it, was as familiar to me as my own reflection. It elicited a sense of déjà vu.
“Orchestrated,” he settled on, saying the word carefully in the way he still did to push down his natural Busan satoori which was so much more prevalent when he was anxious.
“The company, they wanted us to date in public.”
I frowned. “Why?” But what I actually wanted to ask was if he’d really loved her, or had that been fake, aswell? I bit down the question.
Jihoon looked away, taking a deep breath as he let go of me. He took a step back, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
A strangely compartmentalised section of my brain couldn’t help but see how rumpled he was in that suit. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Lee Hyejin had been getting a lot of threats. Death threats. The company was concerned.”
“Because of the dinner photos?” I guessed, although it hadn’t started there, I recalled with unsettling clarity.
She’d been getting attacked for months because some fans assumed she was in a secret relationship with Jihoon, and hated her for it.
I remembered the days before we’d broken up.
Hyejin and Tae had been photographed having dinner together.
It had been framed in a bullshit way that made them look like they’d been on a date.
It had been the perfect storm. Tae’s reputation as the playboy of K-Pop, and Hyejin’s supposed relationship with Jihoon.
It had turned a simple group dinner into an explosion of cheating rumours.
It was the event I’d long considered the catalyst.
“Not just the photos,” he said quietly. “The company hid a lot. She was getting attacked by netizens because they believed she was using our ‘secret love’ as publicity.” He said the words as if they tasted bad. “As if she, or I, or any of us ever have any say in such matters.”
I scoffed. I felt like I said it all the time – women in the public eye almost always came out worse in these situations. It never mattered if the rumours were true or not.
He continued. “After we…” he took a breath. “After the breakup, the company wanted us to date. I know it sounds bad, but I talked about it with Minjae. I did not want to do it. But he said it would be another way to… to protect you.”
My head shot up as my eyes locked on his. “Protect me? How?”
He nodded. “We thought we could make everyone believe Hyejin was the girl in the photos that Hana had already leaked.”
I flinched at the memory. The way I’d been erased from the only evidence that I had existed with him. It still hurt.
I took a steadying breath.
“But Hana would still know,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but the world would believe the story, and Park Hana only cared that it was you. She said it herself. People would hunt you, because they’d think you were an outsider who only wanted money and fame.
Hyejin had those things, and the fans already believed we were dating.
There would be no reason for her to expose what she had, because you were already gone. ”
He made a noise in his throat, not quite a laugh, but something like it.
“We believed she would not care if I dated Lee Hyejin. We were right.”
My gut twisted, and I swallowed to rid myself of the sour taste on my tongue.
The thing was, I didn’t even think it was personal for Hana. I didn’t think she had any negative feelings towards me, in particular. I think that she was just so calculated, that to her, I was collateral damage.
“You went to all that trouble,” I said bitterly, “why not tell ENT and implicate Hana?”
“I couldn’t tell the company.” Jihoon shook his head. “I was scared Park Hana might go… what’s the saying? Explode?”
I thought for a second. “Nuclear?”
“Yes. Nuclear. I worried she would release the photos of you if we went after her again, or if she found out about the plan to date Lee Hyejin before we went to the press. Not because she cared about Hyejin, but because she would figure out I was protecting you. Hiding you behind Hyejin.”
I bit my lip to hide my expression. It was not kind, or elegant. It was targeted, and I understood. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
“It had to be a surprise for everyone. The world already believed Hyejin and I were a couple. They would believe this, and then it would be too late for Hana, because it would be easy to argue the photos of you were altered. Who would believe they weren’t Hyejin?”
I wasn’t sure I agreed. It seemed like Jihoon had banked a lot on fake dating Lee Hyejin as a way to undermine Hana’s leverage. I understood the logic, but those photos of me still existed. She didn’t need the whole world to believe it. She only needed enough people to be loud about it.
“Okay,” I said slowly, “what about Hyejin? How did she feel about this plan?”
He shook his head, his hair falling across his face, obscuring it.
“She was happy to do it. She was exhausted from all the hate. She had offered to leave her group.”
My eyes collided with his as my mouth fell open.
“She was going to leave PrettyYOUngthings?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “It was bad. The company had to pull some of their performances. They were worried because of the threats.”
“Fuck,” I drew out the word, incredulity clearing my head enough to view the mess objectively.
“Did that stop after you… after you went public?”
Maybe not entirely objective.
He took a moment to reply. “Yes.” But then he frowned slightly, shaking his head like he was weighing it up. “Mostly.”
I nodded. I didn’t know Lee Hyejin – had never met her – but I’d always felt slightly jealous of her.
Maybe more than slightly, on occasion. She was the kind of pretty that seemed like it would make everything better – because sometimes that was simply how it worked.
But she was also living proof that sometimes, being pretty wasn’t enough to shield you from all the ugly in the world.
I’d never hated her, not even when it had looked like she’d gotten everything I’d ever wanted. But now I couldn’t even feel jealous.
My arms were wrapped so tightly around myself that it had stopped feeling like a way to stand, and more like a way to stop myself from falling apart.
“It was all a lie?” It sounded like a question, but I just needed to say the words out loud.
“Yes.”
I laughed, just a tiny flicker, inappropriate, like a giggle at a funeral.
“But you broke up with her?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shrug, and irrationally, so irrationally – it irritated me.
“She ended it.”
“Why?”
“Her boyfriend does not like me.”
I blew out a harsh breath.
“Holy hell,” I groaned.
I walked away. The air between us was sticking to my skin. I needed space. I moved over to the padded bench at the foot of the bed, slumping down onto it without grace.
Even now I couldn’t be free of him. He followed me as if he needed to stay in my orbit. He crouched in front of me, looking up from under lashes so dark they ringed his eyes in shadow.
“Kaiya…” His gaze held mine, like he had to force himself to look at me, and maybe it was because he was scared of what he would see, but I suspected it was more to do with how he saw himself. The thought made my chest cave.
I dragged my hands through my hair, feeling like my thoughts were too big for my skull.
“Kaiya,” he tried again. “I am so sorry, you have to believe me.”
I let my hands drop to my sides as I blew out a breath.
“I believe you, Jihoon.”
His eyes widened, and he straightened a little.
“Then–”
“But I don’t know if I forgive you,” I said tightly, cutting him off.
He frowned, and I guessed that to him, believing his relationship was fake, and that Hana had fucked us over was the same thing as forgiveness. It wasn’t.
“Tell me,” I said quietly, “when did you stop wanting to make it work?”
His frown deepened, brows furrowed, each line drawing his confusion all over his face.
“I don’t understand.”
“When did you stop wanting me? Somewhere towards the end of summer? Because that’s about when I placed it.”
“Stopped – Kaiya, I…” He pushed to his feet, and despite myself, I couldn’t help but admire the fluidity with which he commanded his body.
“Kaiya… Never. I never stopped wanting you. I still want you. I want you from the second I open my eyes every morning. I don’t stop wanting you even when I sleep. I dream of you. I will always want you.”
He reached for me, but I recoiled, and he paused, conflict dancing over his face as clear as clouds crossing the sun.
I almost didn’t say it, but I was done moderating myself.
“Why did you throw me away, then?” I had to bite my tongue to keep from choking on the words.
He blinked, processing my words, trying to make sense of a scenario that had so clearly played out differently in his head for all these years.
“I had to protect you,” he said slowly, like he wanted to press the words into me, to make me understand. But I did understand. I saw perfectly how it made sense to him.
“I needed you to be safe, I needed to take care of-”
“I only ever felt safe with you!”