12. Chapter 12
Generally speaking, Eunjae had little experience with keeping his own secrets. He’d kept plenty for his brothers over the years. Small secrets like shoes borrowed and never returned, and the big secrets bound up with Jungwoo’s latest fated — or star-crossed — romance. But Eunjae didn’t have many secrets, personally. This was one of the few.
“That wouldn”t bother you? Not knowing much about me?” His hesitation came from a genuine place. In addition to rarely having secrets worth keeping, Eunjae was accustomed to people wanting to know every tiny detail about him.
A flower fell apart in Jiyeon’s fingers, disintegrating into individual petals. She frowned. “Me, specifically? No. The world could stand to be a little more mysterious. And I guess I’ll know who you are, sooner or later. Amnesia can be reversed. I learned that from Korean dramas and Joey Han.”
A little more mysterious. Entire websites were dedicated to the minutiae of Eunjae’s life. Search engines had long since indexed his birthday, his favorite food, even the name of the Montessori school he’d attended at the age of five. Receiving permission to maintain an air of mystery was nothing short of refreshing.
“But it does bother me that someone is probably worrying about you, wondering where you”ve gone. You have at least one person who would worry about you, right?”
“More than one,” admitted Eunjae. And now remorse crested over him like a wave, blotting out the light. But he still didn”t regret what he”d done, so did that make him the most selfish person on the planet?
Jiyeon stopped tugging at a flower that had gotten tangled in the strands framing her face. She reached into the tote bag for her phone, executing what seemed to Eunjae like an unusually long chain of swipes and passcode entries. When she finally got up to press the phone into his hand, he saw that it had been reverted to factory settings. Perplexed, Eunjae held it flat on his palm, looking down at the setup screen as it politely waited for him to select his preferred language.
“All yours.” Jiyeon closed his fingers over the phone before he could drop the thing entirely. “If you don”t know phone numbers, maybe you can email. Either way, try and let someone know you”re safe.”
“But I can”t just take your phone.”
“I can spare it. See? I have another one.”
Eunjae’s consternation only intensified as Jiyeon showed him her second phone, a relic that flipped open to a no-frills, pixelated display. He wanted to ask if she’d raided an early 2000s time capsule. Instead, he tried not to laugh. This attempt ended in failure.
“Oh, sure. Laugh all you want. But I do have a functional phone, so you can have this one without feeling bad about it.”
“Won’t it still be linked to your number?”
Jiyeon shook her head. “No one has that number except family. It’s almost brand new, especially since I barely use it. Denny got it for me after my old phone, um, fell. Into the Pacific Ocean.”
“The Pacific Ocean.”
“Uh-huh. I prefer the other one. It can’t run any apps and it’s better for me, that way. It makes everything… quieter.”
Quieter. Well, he could see the appeal there. Eunjae squinted at the screen. “So… you can call and text? That’s it, right?”
Soberly, Jiyeon replied, “No, there’s more. I can also play unlimited games of Snake.”
“You’ve got it all then,” Eunjae choked out.
“Everything I need and nothing that I don’t.” A little too brightly, she added, “I”ll go see if I can find you some clothes. Denny’s got plenty in his closet. You’re about the same height so it should work out. Use the phone, okay? I”ll shut the door. Take your time.”
And then she was gone, leaving Eunjae to face the next hurdle on his own. This was unfortunate, because he could”ve used all the moral support he could get.
At least the phone’s setup process provided him with an excuse to procrastinate a little longer. As he plodded through the steps, Eunjae took the opportunity to look around. He so seldom found himself in another person’s room. His brothers didn’t count. The members of Apollo considered the walls between dorm rooms to be porous membranes. They went in and out of one another’s spaces at will.
Eunjae paced around, giving in to curiosity. Relics from past school days were still tacked to the corkboard: the tassel from her graduation cap, photos of a younger Jiyeon posing with friends in front of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, a rainbow of laminated hall passes labeled with the names of at least ten different clubs and organizations.
Eunjae thought he might have enjoyed being part of a club or two in high school. Yearbook, maybe. He liked taking pictures. Trainees had busy schedules, though, and at Emerald they worked with private tutors rather than attending school.
The phone was still updating software. He left it on the desk, almost tripping over a cardboard box containing an ancient, bulbous CD player and a ring light on a flexible stand. Multiple ring lights, actually, snarled with the cable of a microphone. Then he almost tripped again when he sighted the row of stuffed animals on the dresser. One of these was a lion wearing a red bow around its neck.
Every member of Apollo had been assigned an emoji by the fans. These had become synonymous with their public-facing identities. The terrifying Jaehwan was symbolized by a hammer, while the sunflower was chosen for Jesse, and so on. Even in the years before his costumed stint on Mask Singer, Eunjae’s emoji had been the lion. It came from his stage name, Ari, which meant ‘lion’ in Hebrew. Chosen by his mother, it was a family name inherited from her grandfather.
This lion on Jiyeon’s dresser wasn’t Apollo merchandise, thankfully; their stuff was always in pastel blues and yellows, in keeping with the group’s official colors. Even so, a spooked Eunjae turned the lion so that it faced the wall.
His tour concluded at a bookcase crammed with travel guides. The shadowbox propped up on its middle shelf showcased a collection of souvenir keychains, all printed with the name JANE. Jiyeon’s older sister, the one whose phone number she still had memorized. The other twin bed must have belonged to her. Eunjae shared his own dorm with Jungwoo, the brother closest to him in age. Seeing that pair of beds inspired some feelings of homesickness as a result.
What was Jungwoo doing now? He wouldn”t be shocked that Eunjae didn”t have his number memorized. They”d never had any need for that. The two of them were rarely apart for longer than a week at a stretch. Even on their last mini vacation, a gift from the agency after record high sales, Eunjae had chosen to spend part of the holiday in Busan with Jungwoo and his family.
The phone trilled out a triumphant melody once setup was complete. Before his courage could disintegrate, Eunjae tapped in Jaehwan’s number. He saved it to the list of contacts. Then he spent the following thirty minutes typing, deleting, retyping, and meticulously editing an explanation of his behavior. He put it all into three long paragraphs and tacked another apology onto the end, just to be thorough.
It was harrowing work, and he wasn’t even fielding Jaehwan’s replies yet. When Jiyeon knocked on the door around 11:00, nearly two hours after Eunjae punched the Send button on that message, he had fallen asleep at her desk.
Her arms were laden with borrowed clothing, enough for at least a few days. Jiyeon set the bundle down on Janie’s empty bed and went to very gently rest a hand on his back.
“Hey,” she whispered, shaking him a little. Eunjae mumbled an incoherent response. He opened his eyes, saw her there, and closed both eyes again.
He would have no memory of how he got from the desk to the bed; such was Eunjae”s exhaustion that he barely registered the words he spoke to Jiyeon before she left him there for the night.
“Do you know who I am yet?” he”d murmured. The pillow under his head smelled faintly of her shampoo.
Jiyeon plugged the phone into the charger and put it next to the pile of red flowers she”d plucked from her hair. “No,” she murmured back. “Not yet.”