Forty
We keep walking up the increasingly steep trail, and tension continues to build between us like a wall. There’s a flat rock up ahead that’s a bit off the main path. I lead him over and sit.
“Are you tired?” he asks.
“Sit beside me.” He does, and I take his hand and put it between my hands and then my knees to keep it warm. “Tell me what else you’re thinking.”
“There’s nothing else.” He tries to tug his hand away, but I’m an expert at recognizing signs of avoiding feelings. That Jihoon is balking means it’s big, and I wonder how to get him to open up. I depend on him to take the lead on these things.
“We never talked about how this will look when I go back to Toronto,” I say, taking a shot. “We haven’t had the talk about the future.”
He pulls away slightly, and I know I’ve hit it. “Have you changed your mind?” I ask carefully.
The few seconds it takes for him to respond nearly kill me. “No.” When he finally answers, the confidence in his voice lets me relax a bit, and the wall dissolves. He looks up. “I was worried you had.”
The relief I feel is all-encompassing. “No way.”
He laughs and leans his head against mine. “I still have our walking trip to Spain booked in the calendar for next year,” he says.
“That’s amazing, but I’d also like some shorter-term plans.”
“How long until I see you again?” he asks as he looks out at the trees.
I look at my watch as if that will help. It doesn’t. He smiles and holds his own wrist out to show his matching Cartier. “It’s the first time I’ve worn it since Toronto,” he says.
This time, it’s me who gets a thrill at us matching. I give him a quick kiss on the cheek through the masks. “Plans,” I remind him.
“I won’t be able to come back to Canada for a while,” he says.
“I understand. Will you be happy?”
“Away from you?”
I give him a shove soft enough for him to know it’s only affection. “Being so busy and adding to your collection of little hotel soaps.”
He makes a face. “I bring my own. Those are too harsh for my delicate celebrity idol skin.”
“My question was not really about soaps.”
“I don’t know.” He frowns and fixes his hat. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“I thought you went with heart over head,” I say.
Jihoon’s laugh is so biting, I blink in surprise. “I suppose that only works when your heart isn’t split exactly in half.” Then he shakes his head. “I’ll be happy knowing you’re comfortable, and to be comfortable, you need a plan. Let’s do one.”
We sit and talk like two admin assistants booking their C-suite bosses. We talk about his schedule. We talk about calls and short visits. We look at calendars and his touring plans, with no dates in North America for the foreseeable future, and I tell him what kind of workload I have as I try to make partner. Like children, we even come up with a secret sign for him to use in his video chats.
All that is easy. What comes next is harder. “Have you thought about the future after StarLune?” I ask. His contract with Newlight is another four years.
Jihoon shifts over, and I close the rest of the distance. “I’m not going to sign again.”
“What?”
“I’m getting old,” he says simply. “I don’t want to be learning choreo when I’m thirty-two, and I don’t want to disappoint the fans if I need to slow down. I don’t want to be on these schedules. I want to make my own. I want to dress myself for events in clothes that don’t have to match four other men.”
“Your music?”
“That’s the only thing I want besides you. I would get out now if I could do it without letting the others down.”
A few months ago, I would have told Jihoon that you need to watch out for yourself first, but now I don’t know if I believe that. The strength he gets from his relationships with the band and the support they share is astonishing. “Have you talked to the others?”
He shakes his head. “I will, but I only decided a while ago. You were a catalyst for thoughts I was too scared to let surface. I can’t be the one to split up StarLune, but the days are becoming a struggle. I need to grow. It’s like an itch I can’t get, but it’s all I can think about.”
We sit quietly as I scroll through my calendar. “This is going to be hard,” I admit. “Really hard. Your life is next-level.”
“You’re scared, even now.”
That makes me pull back. “There’s a lot to be worried about.”
“Yes, but I’m less worried when I know we’re doing it together. We need to depend on each other.”
“That’s not what I do.” I rub at my face under the mask. “That’s the hard part. You have Kit and the rest to help you. I don’t do that. I’m not used to it.”
Jihoon turns me around to see my face. “What are you really frightened of here, Ari? Is it my career? The distance? The fame?”
“I’m afraid you’ll leave.” I can’t even look at him. “That you’ll wake up one day and look around and realize that it’s too hard and that will be it.”
He pulls his mask down to look at me. “Do you work hard at being a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I work hard, too. All the time, every day. I’m not afraid of work. I know it’s hard for you. We’ll be apart, but you won’t be alone. I promise.”
He tugs my mask down, shushing my protest with a finger on my lips before he lowers his hands. “No one is around, and I need to see you when I say this. You are worth the work. We are worth the effort. I can’t speak for your feelings, so I’ll speak about my own. No one makes me feel alive like you do. Millions of people see me, but no one makes me feel as seen as you.”
I risk looking in his eyes, and it’s intense. He said no one saw him, but I feel the same way. He’s not glancing over my shoulder or fidgeting with his phone. All his focus is on this moment, him and me and what we can be together.
I believe him. This is worth it. “Okay,” I say.
His face relaxes into a smile. “Okay.”
We sit on the rock for another minute, wrung out by the discussion, but Jihoon’s words warm me from the inside. Then I get antsy. I want to walk. I want to talk. I want to… His phone buzzes.
Jihoon checks it and raises an eyebrow. “The apartment is empty.”
“It is?” I pull my mask back up and so does he.
“Mmm, yes. We could head back.”
I give a mock gasp. “And miss hiking to the top of a mountain?”
“The mountain will always be there, but hyeong will eventually come home.”
“That settles it. Home.” After all, I deserve a reward. This emotional honesty stuff is hard.
“I love a woman who knows what she wants.” He leads me down the path.
We have a slow and lazy afternoon in bed, filled with silly jokes and irrelevant observations. A few times, I look over and marvel at the strangeness of the entire situation. Min from StarLune coils like a cat next to me, blinking lazily as he talks about why it’s good to add mayo to cup ramen, although honestly that sounds repulsive.
It’s nice. Nicer than nice, and not because it’s Min. Because it’s Jihoon and I’m falling in love. No surprise, he’s easy to love. His words from earlier keep coming up in my mind. You are worth the work. We are worth the effort. He didn’t mention what I can offer, how many hours I bill. It’s only about me, Ari, as a person, and us as people.
Food arrives—not mayo noodles—and we dive in as if we’re starving, which Jihoon, given the amount of energy he expends practicing and how he needs to fit into the world’s tightest pants, might actually be. I look around the room as we eat. “I keep thinking of tours Luxe could do. Like one here in Seoul.”
Jihoon raises his eyebrows. “If it’s not based around StarLune, I’ll be hurt.”
“It’s like you read my mind. First, we’ll have a guided tour of your apartment, including your state-of-the-art cosmetics fridge.”
“The products are better cold,” he protests.
“Make sure you keep some dirty clothes on the floor for authenticity and preferably a note to Kit about how you’re out of milk or something horribly domestic. Sign it with a lipstick kiss.”
He snorts. “That sounds like a fanfic.”
“No doubt.” I pause with my chopsticks halfway to my mouth. “Do you read those?”
He goes red. “No.”
“Liar.”
“We might have looked when we were younger.”
“Jihoon.”
“What?” He fishes around to put a tofu tidbit on my plate. “How could we not?”
“I mean…because it’s kind of narcissistic?”
He burrows into his food. “We wanted to know what our fans were thinking.”
I wave my hand for him to continue.
“They were thinking some extremely imaginative things that I don’t think are physically possible unless one is a gymnast. Sangjun and I couldn’t look at each other for a week.”
I roll my eyes. “Anyways, a K-pop tour would work. Or food, those are popular. They don’t have to be personally guided. Your location could trigger stories on your phone when you arrive in specific areas. Like it’s serendipity.” Another thought comes to me. “We can partner with vendors, and you can pick up food samples as you go.”
“I would do that. They sound like the one you took me on in Graffiti Alley.”
I deflate. “Yeah, there’s a ton of things like this.”
Jihoon grabs my hand and kisses the palm. “That doesn’t matter. There are thousands of lawyers as well but only one Ari.”
“I suppose.”
He gives me a sharp look. “An Ari who is more animated talking about this new opportunity than she ever spoke about law.”
“That’s true.” It feels strange to say it out loud, like I’m betraying something.
Kit comes in before Jihoon can reply, dressed in comfortable sweats. We wave him toward the food, and he washes his hands before sinking into a chair and helping himself. “Hana is gone?” he asks.
“Took the train this morning,” I remind him.
“Ah, I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I should text her.” He pulls out his phone and sends a text before starting to check his messages.
Then his head shoots up, and he mutters to Jihoon.
When Jihoon’s face goes white, I know there’s a problem.