the summer of 1993 ── dohwa baek - Chapter 18: Chapter 18

"Girl. Just say yes to Seojun."
Eunji had her arms crossed over her chest, clearly agitated because of her beloved best friend. She wasn't the most patient person in the world, especially when the summer sun was glaring down at her, almost burning the top of her head to a crisp. To escalate her frustration, her beautiful brown tresses──which she had tucked into a woven braid──were matted with the seeds of cottonwood trees and sweat. The girl looked like she would choke the whole season of humidity with her bare hands if she could.
"I've told you already. I don't want to."
Y/N was not behind in terms of standing her ground. Some would call that trait stubbornness, but she preferred something more positive, like having strong opinions or ample pride. Whichever of the two she deemed fit as per the circumstance.
"You're leaving him hanging."
"I have rejected him once." She clicked her tongue, leaning her back against the blazing brick wall of her school grounds. "I think that's clear enough indication that he should find someone else."
"Did you not see the gift he got you?" Eunji released a strained sigh. "Give him a chance. He's worth it, I promise."
"Why should I? Do you want me to hurt him by leading him on?"
"Come on, you know you'll fall in love with him eventually."
"It's been two years. I think my mind has pretty much decided what it wants. And what is love anyway?" Y/N mused out loud, earning a scoff of disbelief from the brunette next to her.
"You're asking me that when you dig your nose in those rented romance comics? And don't get me started on the cassettes you steal to watch weird movies..."
She quirked a questioning brow at the accusation. "You taught me how to do that."
"You don't need my input when it comes to love, is what I'm implying." Eunji said with a nonchalant shrug.
"I have seen relationships from afar, and you have been in them. They're two contrasting aspects. Now tell me!"
It was so, so easy to divert her focus from the topic at hand. Just a little bit of persuading, and the voyage of her complaints would deviate to something that Y/N chose as a distraction. In this instance, it was her fabricated interest in 'love'. She was 17, grown enough to understand what the feeling was like. If her feigned curiosity was what got Eunji to tear her attention away from Seojun for a moment, she would do it over and over again.
"...Well. It's, uh," She seemed to be searching for appropriate words, diving through the waters of her vocabulary──which wasn't particularly poet-friendly enough for a query such as this. "Soft. Warm. It hides in conversations, in the way your gaze softens, in the rapid pulse of your life. You stand in front of the mirror for an extra ten minutes to look pretty, your throat goes dry at the simplest graze of your lover's skin, and your smile grows by a centimetre, forcing dimples into your cheeks. Oh, and it definitely hides in questions too."
"Questions?"
She nodded fervently. "Mhm! You can't ask a thing without giving yourself away. It's like, 'what happened?', when you're hoping they're alright, 'when can I see you again?', when you want it to be as soon as possible, or... 'what do you like?', so you can get it for them. It's in the warnings that want you to be safe. It's in your routine with that person. In teasing remarks and laughter and sharing of pain. When a person's face is glued to your thoughts, when everything you see connects to them somehow, when all their flaws turn to intricate carvings by God himself──that's love."
Uh oh.
Y/N should have killed the festering inquisitiveness she used as a hoax before urging Eunji to answer her. Who her brain instantly shifted to, she didn't like. At all. But that was probably just a mistake. A default result of her constant interaction with that person. Nothing else.
Eunji continued, "You must have experienced something like that with Seojun too, right?"
"I... I don't think so?"
"Did your heart not pick up its pace when you saw his gift?"
"Maybe..." She trailed off, having a hard time agreeing with the observation. It was true to some extent.
"Do you not feel heat rush in your veins when we tease you about him? When he's grinning like a flower?"
Y/N just stared blankly, too numb to utter a response or shake her head. She didn't like the direction this discussion was heading towards.
"You do. I've seen it myself."
"I do?"
"Yep."
"But," The girl hesitated to verbalise her doubt, not wanting to solidify her budding affection by putting it in actual words. "There's this friend of mine that I talk to, laugh with, share my problems with and whatnot, just like you said. My... my body gets all tingly when we're close and I've been thinking about him lately for very dumb reasons, but I guess everyone's definition of love is different, because I don't really think I..."
Eunji cracked a smile. "So you do like Seojun after all!"
"Wait, no──"
Y/N was cut off by an excited embrace, her body tumbling back by the momentum. Her limbs fell to her sides in perplexity.
This turned out way more different from what she was expecting.
"Finally! I've been rooting for you two since forever!"
"Eunji!" She exclaimed in an attempt to calm her down, realising that there was a giant lapse in her judgement that would lead to an unsolvable misunderstanding. However stupid she was, she was not going to let her chipper friend scream about how her wishes for Seojun to be accepted by her had come true. That would just shatter the poor boy's heart. "Listen to me first."
Her excitement slowly dissipated. "What?"
"It's not Seojun I'm talking about."
The radiance tore away from her features at the clarification, a frown finding her instead. "Then who?"
"...Dohwa."
Complete silence.
One minute, two minutes, three minutes, followed by the dubious blinking of Eunji.
"What the fuck Y/N?"
"Let's not get aggressive──"
"That idol trainee friend of yours who is probably deceiving you? That Dohwa?"
"He's not deceiving me. I've seen him." She attempted to defend herself, clueless as to how she would elaborate if Eunji asked her about it any further than necessary. She hadn't exactly seen him in the flesh.
"Leave that. Do you like him?" Her sentences were bullets shot straight at Y/N's chest. "Is he handsome? Better than our Seojun?"
"I don't know! This is exactly why I wanted you to help me, but you started joining the dots with Seojun back there!"
"Everyone thinks you two are perfect together. Beautiful and kind and studious. Do not blame me for assuming that you secretly thought the same about him!"
Oh, how Y/N yearned that the complications of her love life were as simple as phrased by Eunji. If only she fell for Seojun and his sweet smiles, Seojun and his black curls, Seojun and his tall stature, Seojun and his athleticism, Seojun and his benevolence. It wasn't her fault that she just couldn't. She had always viewed him as a close friend, as a person she could confide in, as a person who could rely on her whenever he needed her, as a bright moon in her night sky.
Despite him being the personification of the sun, she could think of no one else but Dohwa to fit that position.
Dohwa. Merely mentioning his name was a blow to her stomach.
"I have never fantasized about anyone, ever."
"But you do about Dohwa..."
Y/N opened her mouth to retort, only to shut it close again. She was not entirely wrong.
"That's not... that's very platonic!"
"Please, my idiot, loser, not-so-blood-related sister. Open your damn eyes. This is an incredibly serious case of a crush." Eunji said in a monotonous voice, shaking her by her shoulders.
"I don't like him. He doesn't like me. In that sense. We call every evening without fail, maybe that's why we're so attached."
"Pause. Rewind. Attached?"
Y/N gulped. She knew she had messed up. "Uh... he sort of said that he doesn't want me to leave because he cares about me. I sort of said I enjoy his company a lot. We sort of sang duets together for fun. Sort of. Y'know?"
"...What song?"
"The whole discography of Seo Taiji & Boys, and Something Stupid a few days ago."
Pin-drop quiet. What greeted her next wasn't a reply, but a smack to the side of her head with full force and a loud gasp of shock.
"Platonic?!"
"Ring, ring! Dohwa speaking!"
This would have been cute to Y/N if she wasn't under the clutches of nausea. Eunji had beaten the shit out of her, and then got on her knees, dramatically begging for her to gain some sentience. 'Let me devise a plan for you', she said, but not much faith could be put into the method she ended up advising her to use. She promised her that it would give her the clarity she needed.
Clarity? No, no, Y/N wanted to stay in her little bubble where she wasn't fretting over admiration and crushes and wants. She was well aware that Dohwa would never want her like that, so she wouldn't even bother treading the path Eunji had planted in her cells.
However... part of her wanted to confirm if there was something, albeit tiny and unnoticeable, in his heart for her.
"Hi."
"Hi...?" He drawled out, "That's it, Grandma?"
"I've been thinking."
"Woah, jumping straight into the deep stuff? Share it with the audience!"
Her teeth dug into her lower lip, hard enough to draw tiny droplets of blood. Would she willingly fall victim to Eunji's tactics? She was brimming with anticipation, dying to satiate the questions that prodded at her. If it worked, she would have an explanation, at least.
With a sharp inhale, she prepared herself to launch the missile. "I like someone."
She could hear the deafening reverberations of a detonated bomb in her ears. The only time she had ever used this statement was when she was referring to the singers she was deeply infatuated with, never in the case of a person within her reach, one who she knew so intimately at that. Even if it wasn't a genuine profession, she was still extremely jittery.
Chills. Terror. It was as if she was forced to swallow a jagged pill without water. She wouldn't be able to admit her actual feelings to anyone, ever.
"...Excuse me?" Dohwa spluttered out a confused laugh. "Have your delusions multiplied? This has got to be about Seo Taiji & Boys somehow."
Y/N was gravely offended. "No, loverboy, it's a pressing matter for me. Don't joke around."
"Oh my God. Are we serious?"
"Incredibly."
No one said anything for a while. Y/N was busy instructing her collapsing lungs to not be too greedy for oxygen, and Dohwa? He had gone mute, probably drowned in deep contemplation. She was praying he wouldn't manage to correlate it with Su-ae somehow. That would be worse than rejection.
"Is it a guy you know?" He sounded frail. Nervous, almost.
"Yes."
"Is it a guy I know?"
"Yes."
"Tell me about him. I wanna listen." Dohwa said, much to the girl's dismay. "You know, from one hopeless romantic to another."
Eunji was wrong. This exchange was making her feel ten times worse.
"Um, he's nice?" Y/N was clueless as to how she should describe the imaginary boy she was supposed to be in love with. That preppy brunette claimed that if Dohwa harboured any meaningful affection for her, he would be envious of her crushes, the same way she got uncomfortable whenever he brought Su-ae up. "Personification of vibrance. It's like all my thoughts flock to him the second I wake up. Have you felt that way before? When you can't stop thinking of someone? When they become so... alluring out of the blue?"
Air. Winds. Screech of a bike.
"I have." He muttered quietly.
"That's what it's like. Since we're each other's human diaries, I thought that you should be the first person to know."
"I see."
"Hey, at least pretend to care! I was so supportive when you were pining for Su-ae from afar!"
"What do you want me to do then?" Dohwa asked, his tone drenched with a tinge of bitterness. That hostility soon morphed into guilt. "...I'm sorry. I've been cranky the whole day because of my father."
"Huh? What happened with him?"
There was an echo of her conversation with Eunji.
'What happened?', when you're hoping they're alright.
"Ugh, a random argument. We'll bitch about him tomorrow. You can continue elaborating on the recent developments in your love life now, I'm attentive!"
In teasing remarks and laughter and sharing of pain.
She stifled a chuckle. "There's not much to blabber over."
"I mean, you can blabber all you want with me. I know you like it."
'What do you like?', so you can get it for them.
Y/N was unsure if she was relieved or upset at his neutrality. Both, to be honest, for she was lucky to have Dohwa at all, whether or not it was in a romantic sense. So what if they weren't meant to be anything more than what they were currently? She was happy that she got to meet him. He was her favourite chapter, and she knew it would end at some point, but his presence was prominent enough to leave a permanent mark.
"Hmm... he's also kind of annoying, if we're being transparent."
He snickered. "Thank God you have a thing for annoying men. I still stand a chance."
Her heart, a usually composed melody, now rang with the nervous drumming of a thousand butterflies taking flight. It betrayed her with erratic palpitations at the slightest provocation from him, as if trying to keep up with the torrent of emotions flooding her soul. He was just being himself, and yet...
This girl was chained, her feet forcefully dragging her to orbit around him. Boy, was the stupefaction on her face a sight to see.
She knew.
And if she didn't tell him soon, she was afraid she wouldn't ever be able to.
"You do."
"Okay, that was sufficient messing around. I deserve to know his name, don't you think?"
Y/N had spent days of getting tortured by his re-occurring appearances, by the tremor in his chuckles over the crackling line, by his seemingly casual flirting that made her nerves gallop towards the precipice of desire with reckless abandon. He was allowed to stay devoted to Su-ae, and she was allowed to whisper her prayers for him. If the telephone wires were ever severe, he would be oblivious of the fact that he was fervently liked once, and not as a second choice. Not as an idol. Not as someone he wasn't.
That he was fervently liked once, as a priority, as a playwright liked his tragedies.
She cleared her throat to ease the weight of her broodings. "Leave that for later. How's your disaster of a love life going?"
"You bruise me!" Dohwa exaggerated his anguish, "What if I told you I'm not as alone either?"
Ouch. Maybe some other time, then.
"...I'll obviously be happy for you."
The two of them sighed simultaneously, the sounds mingling together to form a product of their concealed ire.
"Good luck with Seojun, Y/N. You guys will be great lovers."
Y/N could picture Dohwa's scowl from all the invisible trembles his notes housed. There was a pang in her chest, like the slash of a dagger ripping her open. When had she experienced that stinging sensation before? In her nightmares?
"It's... not him. Thanks for the good luck, though."
"It's not?" His pitch rose a level higher. "I──I thought... I thought he was the only option, since you said we both knew your crush."
"It's not. Anyway, good luck with your crush as well. Hopefully this one doesn't leave you for Eunhyeok."
"Shut up!" He hissed playfully, sending a jolt of amusement through Y/N's spine. "He's not all that."
"Is someone jealous? I swear I saw some ashes fly past the booth's window."
"I know she wouldn't go for Eunhyeok. He's not her type in the slightest, and she hasn't even seen him!"
A small fragment of hers was hurt in some corner, but it was negligible enough for her to ignore. She was rooting for him, really. Like any good friend would. Best friend, she corrected herself.
"Don't know about her, but I love men who know what they want."
Dohwa groused, "So you would leave me for him too, huh? Traitor."
Wait.
Y/N almost dropped the receiver to the ground once she registered the meaning at her own pace, creases finding her forehead.
"Me?"
"...Shit."
"What the hell are you saying? Why would I ever go for him? He's not even──"
──my type.
And I haven't seen him.
Oh.
There was a loud groan of mortification, rendering the atmosphere motionless. They were equally transfixed and paralysed at the unwelcome candidness.
"Is it..."
"Yes. Fine." He let out a defeated exhale, "It's you, okay? It's been you!"
The leaves on the poplar trees rustled with the pleasant breeze, adding some noise to the otherwise silent surroundings. Tongue twisted, frozen, Y/N stared at her reflection in the stained glass. Pink in the tip of her nose, her cheeks, and a rush of mellowness swimming through her bloodstream; she was subjected to a terrible case of embarrassment.
"What do you mean?"
"Y/N." Dohwa's fragile breath quivered, "Don't you see it? Everyone else does. Everyone else."
"I... I don't understand..."
"I stop functioning at one glimpse of you. Hell, at the mere thought of you. You... you're a spell to me. All day, all night, in the afternoons, in the evenings──you just don't leave my goddamn head, Y/N! It kills me when I realise that the future I hope for us doesn't exist, because you don't exist!" His voice was feeble against the ravaging duel of surprise and pain within Y/N's mind, her fingers tightly wrapped around the pendant she was wearing. "I've carried the weight with me for far too long, afraid of shattering what we have. My heart hurts for you and you... don't see it..."
"Dohwa." She intoned, digesting the intensity of his fierce confession, if it even was one. "Please don't be mad. I... I'll try to do whatever I can to mend it and──"
"You still don't get it." He sniffled on the other end, as helpless as a puddle on the floor. "Before I go to bed, I confess to the stars that you're the constellation I navigate by. The north star, the sun, the nucleus. I'm sick of pretending that I don't want you, because I do and I do it bad. I don't know what to call this desperation, because you're a paradoxical artwork that brings me reverence and despair both at once. Tell me, can you stop this suffocating distress?"
Y/N stifled the burning tears that pooled up, threatening to spill out. She didn't want to surrender to their urges, to become a portrait of vulnerability in front of Dohwa. It would be unfair, because the truth of him lay bare amid the wreckage of their feelings, but he was still not crumbling under their weight.
"Do you like me?"
"...Listen."
"Do you like me?" She repeated with more diction, bracing herself for the impact.
"You already have someone."
"Just answer my question."
"What if I say I do? It's not going to change the fact that──"
"──That the only person I want is you."