Page 53 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)
T he new album, Tracks of Transition , was set to release the week after Chuseok, just in time for the group to perform at the Incheon Music Festival. It was one of their last big engagements of the year.
The frenzy leading up to it meant that our video or voice chats were brief ? always stolen snippets of time. He was either on his way somewhere or just coming back, and he was always tired.
He did send me lots of selfies, though; a veritable feast of fashion and staging pictures from the group’s ‘look book,’ wherein all the members cycled through dozens of different outfits and staging set ups to be used in the album’s visual art, photo cards and other merchandise.
I joked one morning by asking if he could get me Woojin’s photo cards, and it led to an entire day of pouting selfies.
Photo in the changing room? Pout. In the bus?
Pouting. Posing with the other members? Pouting.
I’d laughed all day at those, especially as I’d sent him the most aegyo-sickly sweet poses back.
It felt like we were doing the most to stay emotionally connected to each other and to stay present, without being present.
Aside from regularly calling me ‘jagiya’ and exchanges of ‘x’s, it felt more like a penpalship, and it crossed my mind on more than one occasion that perhaps that’s what was happening between us.
Maybe I was expecting too much.
“Long distance relationships are hard.” Becka had lamented, when I’d confessed how I’d been feeling recently.
“I’d forgotten that you’d understand that,” I confessed with a guilty wince. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that she’d been in a relationship with Ben when she’d moved to London for a year during university. He’d stayed in California and they’d somehow made it work.
“You’ve been preoccupied,” she shrugged, giving me far more grace than I deserved.
“How did you do it?” I was hesitant to ask, given how the subject of Ben was still a sore one, but she considered the question for a moment before she answered it.
“Truthfully, I’m not sure. Going in, we both acknowledged it was going to suck. Our relationship was still so new at that point, like yours,” she waved her mug at me. “But we were both so adamant we would make it work.
“I think that’s the thing that made all the difference, on reflection.” She said, nodding with a conviction I envied. “Relationships are a conscious choice and at that time, we both chose the other, and we made that same choice every day we were apart.
“You didn’t question it?”
“Oh, I questioned it plenty.” Becka chuckled, but it was a hollow sound. I patted her hand and she shot me a small smile.
“But you know what’s crazy?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“I wouldn’t change it. Even now, even after… even after everything,” she swallowed. “I think it made me learn what I would be willing to do. You know, for someone I loved. Even if they didn’t deserve it.” After that, we’d each lapsed into silence, each thinking, one of the past, one the future.
The Incheon KPop festival was a two-day event, but GVibes was only performing a mini-set on one of the days.
It had fallen on a Saturday, which meant I didn’t get to watch it before Sunday, and since there weren’t any official streams, I had to look around for decent fan-cam footage of it.
It wasn’t that hard to find, not since I’d joined some on-line communities for purposes just like this.
It made me feel weird to be lurking in those groups, not because I was dating Jihoon, but because of the things some of the fans discussed in them.
Largely, it was all supportive and centred around streaming numbers and posting memes about them ? I especially enjoyed the memes ? but sometimes the fans posted thirst traps of the members, or had entire threads about which of the guys were in a relationship, or even speculating who in the group was dating who.
The popular ‘ships’ seemed to be either Woojin and Seokmin, or Jihoon and Seokmin; no one could seem to agree.
It felt pretty gross to see these completely open discussions about if the members were gay, dating each other, or dating other idols. There was a very real feeling of ownership in these kinds of conversations. Some of it was pretty harmless, but some of it was pretty intense.
The worst, though, were the threads from people threatening violence on anyone outside of the group who was rumoured to be dating one of them.
There had been a stylist of the band who had been photographed standing next to Minjae backstage a couple years ago, and even though it had been her literal job to be there, waves of ‘netizens’ had hunted her down and found out her name and harassed her so badly that she’d left the entire company.
Well, rumour had it that she’d been fired, which was perhaps even more frightening.
I would prefer to think any company would support one of their employees in the face of such vitriol. But either way, the rumours died down.
Ever since then, the company blurred out the faces of all of the staff members, if they happened to catch them on film while taping the group.
In the ‘before Jihoon’ time, I’d known how toxic fandoms could be.
It wasn’t exclusive to KPop by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed somehow more amplified.
There was a sense of ownership that I couldn’t understand.
It went beyond hero-worship. But luckily, for all the toxic fans who took it too far, there were whole legions of other fans who were quick to shut it down, who loudly insisted that they were grown men and they could date, or not date and it wouldn’t be anyone’s business but their own.
Those were the posts I took courage from .
It wasn’t a surprise that most of the footage I was able to find of the festival was of the individual members, what was referred to as ‘solo stan fan-cams.’ I watched some of the Jihoon footage before someone finally shared a compilation of footage.
Honestly, some fans do the absolute most and are the unsung heroes.
It was Sunday evening by this time, so I dragged Becka into the lounge to watch it with me.
“It’s not long,” I cajoled, pulling her down onto the sofa with me.
She sighed, but sat down with me gamely, and together we watched the set. I had to credit the fan; she’d done a great job of compiling the various camera angles to form a pretty cohesive one-take.
“They’re just all so pretty,” Becka said for the third time.
“I know, right?”
“Who’s that, and why do they keep cutting to them?
” Becka asked as the view once again cut back to a view of the audience where a group of three or four girls were clearly watching the show.
They were all super pretty, even under the caps and layered clothes they wore.
They must have enjoyed the performance, because they were giggling and pointing excitedly at the stage, just like I would have been.
Something about them did look familiar though.
“I don’t know,” I said, frowning. “Let me look at the comments.”
“Already doing it,” Becka said, taking a long sip from her massive drink bottle while flipping irreverently through her phone.
“Who’s Lee Hyejin?” She wrinkled her nose.
I thought for a moment, trying to remember why the name sounded so familiar, until finally, I offered a silent apology to GVibes and Jihoon and pulled out my own phone, quickly tapping in the name. Immediately my screen was covered in pictures of a group I was aware of, but not familiar with.
“Ah,” I said, nodding my head, “she ? and I’d guess the other girls ? are members of a girl group also under ENT, PrettyYOUngthings.” I scrolled for a few moments more, reading the relevant information. “She’s the group’s maknae. She’s the lead dancer and rapper, apparently.”
“Good for her,” Becka garbled through a mouth full of ice .
Just then, I saw a thread that paused me like a tape deck. I hovered my thumb over it, giving myself the option of not opening that can of worms, but almost compulsively, I pressed down and watched as the page loaded.
First a picture of Lee Hyejin, a woman so blessed with good looks it was difficult to look away, and then to a picture of Jihoon, a still from one of his on-stage performances.
He had his head thrown back with his eyes closed as sweat glistened on his skin.
It was an undeniably sexy photo, and in this context, an undeniable implication.