Chapter 2
TWO
WINGS - SO! YOON! FEAT. PHUM VIPHURIT
She’d lied and told them it was a requirement for her internship at an events management company and
Because Megan was also going, and her parents expected her to go with Megan.
Lia knew the minute she met Megan they were going to be inseparable—they had been like two peas split from the same fangirl pod back ever since they met at freshman orientation.
Lia would have described it as meeting a kindred soul, a friend that she was always meant to make.
They were both from the same not-so-large high schools in Metro Manila, both all-girls Catholic.
Both were the only students from their respective high schools at this fancy new Big 4 school.
They had both seen Ouran High School Host Club, and were both in love with Shun Oguri.
Lia had been the one to find CoBOLT, mid-marathon of Angels Fly High, the KDrama that Frankie insisted they watch together. Cal had shown up in the school drama’s sports festival episode as a guest star, which led to the question that changed the course of her entire life—“sino ‘yan?”
The rest, as they say, was fangirl history. Lia found out who he was, that he was in a band. Lia fell in love with the band’s music, and then she got to know the other members. Then she started watching them on various variety shows, music show performances, commercials, parodies, and collabs.
So when CoBOLT announced an Asia tour with a stop in Manila, there was no question. Lia and Megan were going to see them live together.
Lia had been stunned when the four boys first walked onto the stage. She needed Megan to shake her and scream every word of “Bolt of Blue” with her, needed her best friend to hold her hand through Cal crooning sorrowfully to songs like “Lie to Me,” and jumping to “Coffee Baby.”
Before then, she didn’t know how powerful live music was, how life-changing it could be to hear your favorite band play your favorite songs right in front of you.
She didn’t know how exciting it was to feel the bass of the music under your skin, to feel the way the room vibrated with the beat of the drums, and to feel how cathartic it was to sing with the band.
Cal had been electrifying onstage. He’d only been twenty-two then, but he was the leader of Korea’s biggest idol band and could command the audience, no problem.
He knew how to hype up a crowd, to use his voice to fill the entire Araneta Coliseum without breaking a sweat.
He jumped around the stage, ran around with a guitar strapped to his body, no problem.
He certainly knew how to make Lia feel like he was singing just for her.
And she had fallen in love, for what felt like the very first time in her life.
With music, what it made her feel. She understood her brother spending hours locked up in his room just listening to music, how her older sister could sit in front of a piano and glare at pieces like a thousand-piece puzzle and painstakingly learn each measure.
Lia never had that irascible (irascible?
!?) thirst for knowledge, or the patience like her siblings did, but she did know why they loved it.
“I never wanted the show to end.” Megan had sighed, clutching her Bomseok poster as Lia cradled her copy of Thunder Blue to her chest. “I’m so glad we went together.”
Lia loved that she didn’t have to say things out loud sometimes, because it felt like Megan said it for both of them.
Because really, same. And as they walked across the street to the McDo where her Dad was supposed to pick them both up, she decided that this was what she wanted her adult life to be.
Surrounded by good music, a band she loved, and her best friend.
It didn’t turn out that way, though. Not at all.
Lia was dreaming of the night of her birthday. She dreamed of the melted frosting on her buttercream cake, with a ‘happy birthday’ she’d dedicated to herself. She saw Megan’s text, and that stupid cat GIF with teary eyes playing over and over again.
Sorry, traffic eh. Katamad haha.
She dreamt of herself staring out of her open condo window at the choked sounds of her sobbing. She dreamt of herself at the lowest point in her life, when not even the person who knew her the best of all wanted to be with her.
She woke herself up.
“—did a collab with Tamaki-san that I really liked,” Cal was saying to Teddy, rousing Lia from the nap she’d taken in the very back seat of the van.
Teddy’s equipment bumped against her, which was fine because there had been no other place for her to sit.
Between a driver, a manager, and Cal and Teddy, Lia had been relegated to the backseat, where she had apparently cuddled some kind of box thing.
The massively wide highway, with trees that were just starting to change color, had given way to smaller, narrower streets now that she was awake.
Buildings crowded and stuffed themselves into every available space, chasing their own piece of the city’s grey skies.
The trees that lined the streets, in comparison, were just starting to turn, creating a strange palette of dull greys and blues with a touch of bright yellow green.
People shuffled along the wide pedestrian streets, some already in jackets and sweaters, heads down and umbrellas out as a light rain sprinkled through the city.
Where had she heard this song before? The one playing in the car? Was she just coffee-deprived, or was it in Japanese?
“I listened to that one,” Teddy agreed, sitting in the captain’s seat to Lia’s right. “A KPop idol singing city pop and J-rock. It was actually very CoBOLT.”
Then the music changed. Cal was very clearly controlling the music playing in the car from his phone, and Lia recognized the song from the album art, because what Pinoy kid didn’t recognize the opening song of Ghost Fighter when it was playing?
It was a classic that hit triple platinum on Lia’s CD player, with a pirated CD she’d begged her Dad to buy for her.
A CD she’d listened to until it got all scratched up and skipped whenever she turned her head wrong.
“Anyway, that’s what I’ve been listening to lately,” Cal explained, tapping his fingers along to the song’s funk bass line.
Lia didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the song outside of “nostalgic, funky, classic.” “Anime soundtracks from the nineties. I scratched up all my CDs, playing these songs on repeat.”
“So did Ate Lia.” Teddy chuckled, and Lia jerked in her seat like she’d forgotten she was actually in this car with them. “She used to cry in the middle of the pirated CD store just so Dad would buy her the anime soundtrack ones.”
“They were more expensive for some reason.” Lia grumbled.
“She used to burn CDs for her friends and make sleeves and CD covers.” Teddy continued, fully hammering the nail in Lia’s dorky schoolgirl persona. “She did that thing where they soaked the paper in coffee to look old?”
“I’m sitting right here,” she said from the backseat.
“Yes, I know. You chose to sit there.”
“Really now. I’m intrigued.” Cal twisted in his seat so he could look at her, and Lia was wearing the wrong sweatpants for this because she almost slid right off the leather seats in a bid to shrink under his gaze.
He looked excited, and Lia recognized the look of someone hoping another fan was walking among them. “What songs were on those CDs?”
“I don’t remember, it was a long time ago.” Lies.
“A lot of Incubus. Imago,” Teddy said, and Lia narrowed her eyes to glare at her brother. As far as she remembered, her brother hadn’t paid any attention to the interests of her youth.
“The Fushigi Yuugi soundtrack,” he yapped on. “The opening of Hunter x Hunter and Flame of Recca. Spongecola. You had a Sugarfree phase too, ‘diba?”
“You were snooping on my files!” Lia gasped when she realized, because they only had one computer at home, and it probably didn’t take much to click over to the folders marked ‘LiA’s StUfF.’
“I liked the music in those shows.” Cal announced. “And the Rurouni Kenshin soundtrack.”
“It was a phase. A fangirl phase,” Lia said dismissively. He seemed disappointed, pouting and everything, and it was so cute, Lia wished she was holding a giant baby unicorn doll and choking it. Was that gigil or kilig? Or both? “I outgrew that.”
“I will never be mad at a fangirl phase,” Cal said, shrugging before turning to face forward again. “Fandoms run the world, after all.”
His world, maybe. Hers had long stopped revolving because she had an adult life to live, the real world to conquer. Girls shouldn’t waste time on loving things...for some reason.
Thankfully, Teddy was both a little shit and a single-minded, single-celled organism, and changed the subject. “How did your meeting with your CEO go?”
Was that something you just asked casually?
Apparently, Teddy could. Cal shifted in his seat, and Lia wondered why she imagined him opening the door next to him and rolling out of this conversation.
Could almost see him drop the idol persona all of a sudden, and Lia shouldn’t be hurt by that, but it did sting. A tiny bit.
Lia had to look away so she couldn’t see him run his hand through his hair, and also because this clearly wasn’t a conversation she was supposed to hear (but then again, she wasn’t a fan anymore). It was also so she didn’t ask herself what Cal’s hair smelled like.
Which might not be a mystery soon because they were on their way to his apartment so she could live in it, and suddenly she wanted to kill her brother all over again. Lia did not like having to panic, and she needed to find a hotel to stay in.
“They are expecting…a lot. At least double the sales of the last album, new endorsements, a music show win when we haven’t even performed since that last broadcast. They want this done in three months. Three months! For release by April next year.”