Thirty-Nine
The next day I go with Hana to the train station. Even though Jihoon offered to fly her, Hana wants to take the KTX train because “it goes over three hundred kilometers an hour!” I hadn’t known she had a thing for trains.
“Try to sit with the baseball team,” I tell her as Yeong hauls out her luggage and she thanks him.
She looks at me. “A Train to Busan joke? Predictable.”
I wave her off and get back in the car. A few minutes after I arrive at the condo, Jihoon comes in, Kit trailing behind him. Both men look utterly beat, but Jihoon smiles and envelops me in a hug before resting his cheek on my head. “This was worth surviving the early morning photo shoot,” he says.
“We can stay in if you’re tired.” I pull back to look him over.
Jihoon makes a face. “I’ll fall asleep, and I have plans for us.”
“Have fun.” Kit lolls over the couch in a melodramatic reenactment of The Death of Marat and then collapses to the floor. He sounds uncharacteristically friendly, which I attribute to his fatigue.
Jihoon prods Kit’s prone body with a toe. “We’ll be back tonight. Don’t wait for dinner.”
“Be smart, Jihoon-ah,” Kit says, rolling over on his back. “Can you drag me to my room before you go?”
“No.” Jihoon steps over him lightly.
We head off. “What did Kit mean by being smart?” I ask.
“Don’t be seen.”
I stiffen at Kit being Kit after all. Jihoon grabs my hand and holds it. “It’s not you,” he says hurriedly. “I mean, it is you because I’m trying to protect your privacy, but it’s not you personally, if that makes sense.”
“I get it.” I do but I feel uneasy. It’s like he’s ashamed of me. “Where are we going?”
“What shoes are you wearing?”
“That’s your concern. My shoes.”
He sighs. “For walking, Ari, not style. I want to know if you can go for a hike.”
“I’m good.” I don’t need to glance down to check that I’m wearing comfortable flats.
“Perfect. Seoul has many mountains.”
“We’re climbing a mountain?” I’m intrigued, but also, mountains are high.
“We’ll do an easy path,” he says. “Not up to the summit.”
We chat idly about nothing in particular as we drive north out of the city, and now that I’m looking, I can’t believe I haven’t noticed how mountainous it is here. Seoul is so modern that the green that rises all around almost seems to fade into the background.
“Here we are,” Jihoon announces. “Bukhansan Mountain.”
He hands me a face mask that I dutifully don as I weave my hair into a tight braid. Jihoon pulls on a bucket hat and a mask, and there’s no way anyone can recognize him because all you can see is his—admittedly very pretty—eyes. Then he dons sunglasses and those are hidden, too.
The mountain trail is moderately busy, and I soon learn to dodge older women wielding technical hiking sticks like weapons. It reminds me of home, with the autumn leaves glowing red and gold in the sun and a cool bite to the air.
Jihoon takes my hand, and we walk for about ten minutes, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts but enjoying the other’s presence. Occasionally he takes out his phone to jot down a note, and I lean on a rail and let my mind wander. This is the first time in years I haven’t been thinking about work, and it’s a little worrisome. I should be scheming and plotting about how to raise my profile, especially given Brittany’s rising star.
I don’t want to. I feel at rest, my mind calm. Jihoon taps away as he hums, absorbed in the fragments of lyrics and melodies that he wants to capture before they fade. Law was never that. It was a duty, and I’m competitive and egotistical enough to want to be the best, but I never loved it. I was never inspired the way Jihoon is right now.
My hand goes white on the rail. I’m never going to be the best lawyer in the city, at Yesterly and Havings or anywhere else. I don’t want it enough, not anymore. I don’t know if I ever did or if I simply repeated that story to myself until I believed it.
Beside me, Jihoon rolls his neck in a circle. I reach up to stroke his nape, rubbing the tight muscles under his warm skin. He smiles. “Thank you.”
“You’re deep in thought.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “What’s your favorite song of ours?” he asks me.
“Only Us.”
“Why?”
I pull up the English translation of the lyrics on my phone. “I like this verse,” I say, pointing at the screen.
He hooks his head over my shoulder to see.
When we stand together
Our knees are scratched rough
Filled with sand and pebbles
The lost cousins of boulders
The hidden children of the mountains
That used to encircle us
Brushing our palms down
The dust flies up like dice on a throw
Your hand on mine
Our feet lost in the dunes
My hand slips in your sleeve
Your arm warm against my side
Where I’ll keep it close forever
I found “Only Us” when I was on the plane, and something about the image caught my attention. There are pages of debate about the meaning, but when I read it through, I agreed with the consensus, that it’s about two people who leave everything to be together.
Unlike the other StarLune videos, which are slickly produced dance numbers with high-concept wardrobes, the video for “Only Us” is grainy and looks low-budget. The band wears ripped jeans and T-shirts, with mussed hair and ambitious eyeliner. There’s a sixth person, grayed out so you can’t tell their gender or age, and they all try to leave in turn before a door opens and light streams out. Only the faceless sixth person gets through, and they don’t look back when the door closes. The video ends with the image of the door, now weathered and faded, cracking open again.
I read over the lyrics. “It’s not as poppy and light as some of StarLune’s other songs.”
He gives me a wry smile. “The ones I write.”
“They’re good!” I don’t want to insult him, but it’s not like he doesn’t know that. Anyway, they’re chart-toppers.
“The ones Daehyun writes are more to your liking? Like this one?”
“Well…”
“I wrote ‘Only Us.’”
I frown. “Are you sure?”
“I know my own song, Ari.”
I look back at the lyrics to find the songwriting credits. “It has both your names.”
Jihoon props his foot up on a rock and leans out to survey the trees. “It does. His name is first. ‘Dance Royalty,’ on the other hand, has my name first.”
I pull him back on the path so we can keep walking. “You need to explain this.”
“You saw Daehyun. Met him.”
“Yes.”
“How would you describe him?”
“Brooding, sort of quiet and dark. Tough.”
Jihoon laughs. “He’s a clown in private. Plays tricks on everyone, always having fun. He doesn’t like the cameras, so he shuts down when we have to do interviews or we’re filming. They used that as his image when we debuted and built on it. How about me?”
“Ah.” How to answer this with tact. “Bright and playful?”
“Of the two of us, who do you think loves bubbly pop, designed to get people laughing and dancing? Who would like the kind of music to listen to in the rain when you yearn to be happy but you’ve forgotten how?”
“Oh my God.” I stop dead, causing a woman behind me to tap me with her walking stick. I jump out of the way with an apology, and she barely adjusts her visor before striding on. “You’re kidding. You wrote the songs people think are Daehyun’s.”
He nods. “While he wrote the ones people associate with me.”
“Holy shit. Isn’t that, like, fraud?”
“Technically no. We’re both on the songwriting credits, and we collaborate, but the company wants to maintain the images they created for us. They don’t lie, but they promote the idea that I write the light songs and Daehyun writes the dark ones because they think that’s what appeals to our fans.”
I walk for a bit, mulling this over. “I don’t want to say the fun songs aren’t as good as the other ones,” I say carefully. “The fans love them, and they cheer people up.”
“We want to make people happy.”
“Your songs are the ones people keep talking about and theorize about, the ones they turn to when they need to feel seen. Doesn’t it bother you that people think Daehyun writes them?”
He looks down and nods. “It should be enough to have StarLune do my songs,” he says. “Yet I’m selfish.”
We walk along. “Do you not like the songs people think are yours? Daehyun’s?”
“I do. I love them. To write a song that sticks like that is a gift, and Daehyun is a genius.”
“I hear a but.”
“I want to do more. I feel like a liar to the fans. I want to talk to them freely about my music but the company won’t let us.” He toes at a fallen leaf.
There’s something dark in his voice. “What else?”
“I want to write more songs like the ones I love and to explore where that can take me, but they don’t chart as well. The company wants us to focus on Daehyun’s style for the next album. His songs, even though people will think it’s me. It’s success some would kill for, but it makes me feel sick.”
There’s a long silence, and I can tell he’s struggling. I take his hand and wait until he speaks again. “Perhaps my songs don’t chart as high because they’re not good enough,” he says in a low voice. To hear Jihoon unsure about his talent is shocking. Of all the things I thought he would be 100 percent sure of, his ability tops the list.
“You know fans love them.”
“Because they’re StarLune. Would they love them the same if they didn’t know it was me?”
“That’s an impossible question.”
He frowns at the trees, and I take his other hand, rubbing the cool skin to get some warmth in them. “Hey,” I say. “I’ve done nothing but complain about my work to you. It’s your turn.” It bothers me that I can’t see his full face under his mask. I want to reassure him, but I’m not sure how, here in public. I rub harder, hoping he can tell I want him to keep talking.
“It’s not an impossible question. I sent some songs out. My own songs, under a false name. They were rejected.” He looks down at me. “The rejection came right before I went on stage for our final tour show. I’d never doubted myself like that before.”
“Jihoon, no.” I lean in to give him some comfort. “You should talk to the rest of the band about this. Does Newlight accept every song you and Daehyun write for StarLune?”
“No.” His answer is reluctant.
“Not every song is going to work. Sure, fans might be more willing to listen, but they wouldn’t remain if you started producing garbage.”
“Starrys are very loyal,” he says doubtfully.
“Because you deliver.”
He brightens a bit, then fades. “If Newlight wants only Daehyun’s sound, and no one will take my songs when they don’t know it’s me, what do I do? Who am I if I’m not Min and a songwriter for StarLune?”
I tuck his arm in mine. “You’re also Jihoon, and you’ll keep trying until you make it happen.”
He smiles then, a real smile, and pulls me close. “Thank you, Ari.”