Page 6 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)

H e said my name. Baek Jihoon said my name.

I kept repeating this mantra over and over again in my head as I floated happily around the building.

And he was so nice! I mean, I hadn’t thought he’d be horrible or anything, but having it confirmed that he was actually just a nice guy was… hell if it wasn’t some kind of relief. It made him more of a real person and less of an ‘idol’.

My pace eventually slowed back to a normal, less frantic speed and I began to wonder what he was doing here. I hadn’t heard of any collaborations, normally they tease them weeks ? if not months in advance. Maybe he was working on something solo.

For the rest of the day, I tried to carry on as normal, I really did.

I caught up with Jeremy once I was done bringing all the boxes upstairs, I checked in with Becka to let them know Studio 3 had their food.

She tried to press me for details, but I fobbed her off with the excuse that I had to get back to work ? which was true, but didn’t normally stop me.

I hadn’t wanted to gossip about this. It felt weird, somehow.

I wanted to keep the experience to myself, for as long as possible .

The last thing that Jeremy had me do that day was construct a drum set in Studio 1. I thought he was joking.

“I don’t know how to do that,” I told him flatly. We’d moved past the point of sugar-coating in our relationship. I’d learned early on with Jeremy that he had no time or patience for people to blow smoke up his ass.

So now, if I didn’t know something, I didn’t waste his time trying to botch my way through it, I just came out and told him.

Today he just sighed and handed me a manual.

“This should be Tech’s job,” he grumbled, “but it turns out their union is considering a strike.” He looked more tired with every word he said.

“That explains why they’ve not been around much this week.” I said, nodding my head in understanding.

“Yeah, hence why this is now our problem. It’s not just drums either,” he said darkly. “It’s never just drums.”

Honestly, he looked kind of murderous so I decided to just roll with it in the spirit of our good relationship and that despite the copious amount of donkey-work, I really did love working here.

“You can count on me, boss. Consider the snares snared, the drums mounted and the cymbals… whatever it is the cymbals do.” I cheerfully saluted him, which earned me a ceiling-high eye roll and some under-the-breath mutterings as Jeremy walked away. Something about ‘funny Brits’.

I wasn’t nearly so cheerful about an hour later as I stood in the middle of Studio 1’s booth surrounded by various bits of drum kit, including the screws and clamps.

I’d tried to arrange all the parts on the floor in an order that would reflect their construction and instead ended up standing in the middle of what a drum kit would look like once it’s gone through a wood chipper. I dragged my hand down my face.

“Well, fuck,” I said to the empty room. “I wildly overestimated my ability to follow a manual.”

In despair, I flopped down onto the ground.

Bending my leg up, I leaned my elbow on my knee and rested my forehead into my hand.

I sat there for a while, contemplating my life choices until I heard a door down the corridor open, followed by a stream of voices, laughing, and talking.

The party passed by my room when I realised I’d left the door partially open.

A moment later there was a light tap at the door. I looked up in surprise and… there he was.

Because of course he was.

Baek Jihoon was standing in the doorway, witness to my complete failure at the IKEA of percussion.

“Are you okay, Kaiya?” I still could not believe he knew my name.

“Oh, hello.” The words fell out of my mouth on blessed instinct as I mentally flailed for a second. “Yeah, just... you know. Trying to build a drum set.” And then I laughed. Laughed! I might have gone mad for a second there. I rubbed a hand down my face tiredly.

"Can I help?” Snapping my eyes back to his face, I was surprised to see that he’d stepped fully into the room, and though he had his hands in his pockets, he looked genuine as he assessed the parts around me.

“Oh!” I puffed out a breath. “I’m not sure…

” I trailed off as his manager appeared in the door.

He said something to Jihoon in Korean. I had no idea what, but I did make out ‘Hard Rock’ in the mix, which, unless Jihoon was experimenting with music genres, I guessed meant they were going to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. I mean, when in LA…

Jihoon waved him off, replying in Korean and holding up both hands in the universal sign for ‘10 minutes’.

The manager looked disapproving but left.

I heard the group in the corridor start talking again before the elevator doors opened with a chime and then closed again, taking the sound of voices with it.

I watched the whole interaction with interest, intrigued at Jihoon dismissing his manager.

I’d always kind of assumed the power-dynamic in idol groups was the other way around, but then, GVibes had become wildly successful in recent years. Maybe that changed things.

And that’s when he took off his coat. I felt my mouth drop open the same moment I wondered if I’d lost total control of my face .

Thankfully, I managed to snap my jaw closed just before his eyes landed back on me after he’d laid his coat on the back of a chair.

It’s not that he was wearing anything particularly extraordinary, just an oversized, plain, white t-shirt and black jeans. Maybe it was seeing his arms in real life? They were very nice arms, I mused.

“Can I see?” he said quietly, holding his hand out for the manual I’d flung irreverently at my feet.

“Oh, sure!” I grabbed for it and passed it to him. His brow furrowed as he looked over it.

Huh. He was reading the manual. I kind of got the impression he’d just sort of dive in and figure it out. But when I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

He read those dog-eared pages with the kind of intensity reserved for life-or-death situations.

“Okay,” he announced before stepping over the line of nuts and bolts and dropping down into a squat next to me in the centre of the anatomy of a would-be drum kit.

His immediate proximity made me lose my balance, my arm slipping off my knee and I veered comically to the side, fully prepared to accept my fate as I fell.

Until, I stopped.

Jihoon had a hand on each of my biceps, steadying me. He ducked his head down to look me in the eyes, a move straight out of every good K-drama.

“Are you okay?” He asked, and I could only nod.

His hands were wrapped gently around the bare skin of my biceps, the sleeves of my white t-shirt rode high, almost to my shoulders.

Immediately I felt my skin prickle with goosebumps.

He was so close that I finally got to see what he smelt like.

I mean, obviously I'd gone mad by this point, so hell, why not double down?

I leaned forward slightly, so slightly that it could be passed off as re-centring myself, but I was actually trying to see what he smelt like. It was nothing strong. He just smelled like laundry. Clean.

I wondered if my double-team of perfumes could still be smelt. To be honest, I’d just settle for not smelling like I’d spent the whole day humping boxes up and down the damn building .

Mentally, I gave myself a shake and leaned back slightly to be able to look him in the eyes. I forced a smile onto my face and said, “Thanks. I guess I’m a bit tired.”

He smiled back at me and nodded before taking his hands off my arms. I immediately missed the gentle warmth of his hands wrapped around me.

“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted, waving a hand around.

He nodded again, frowning slightly. “Okay, let’s try.” He said, grabbing a long, metal pole and one of the clamps I’d so carefully laid out and grouped.

I just watched in wonder as he built the whole damn thing.

Under his careful directions, I passed him parts and held things as he screwed things together, or threaded things on other things and when he finally set the biggest cymbals at the top of their respective stands and tightened the clamp that held them at the desired angle, I couldn’t help but whistle in admiration.

He looked up at me and grinned shyly.

“Do you build a lot of drum kits?” I asked, laughing quietly.

He waved his hand from side to side. “One or two,” he answered.

“Wow.” I wasn’t faking how impressed I was. “Do you play?”

He shook his head. “A little,” he said.

“Uh huh,” I said, as a mischievous notion occurred to me.

I picked up the sticks from where I’d left them on a chair and held them in front of him.

He looked up, first at the sticks in my outstretched hand and then to my face. I raised an eyebrow and smirked. He huffed out a little laugh, looking away for a moment before taking them from my hand.

He sat down on the little stool, adjusting a few things here and there. He raised the sticks, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes and smiled in an embarrassed sort of way. I giggled.

Giggled. For fuck’s sake.

He played what I’m sure is a basic, scales-like rhythm, but to me it looked and sounded like proper playing.

His hair flew around his face slightly as his body moved with each hit, his knee bouncing as his foot worked the bass drum .

He finished with a flourish and looked down at his feet like he was embarrassed. I clapped enthusiastically, my reward that full beam smile that made my heart lurch.

“Bravo,” I said softly, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

“Thank you,” he said shyly as he got to his feet.

In the aftermath of the loud drums and clash of the cymbals, the air in the room felt like it was vibrating in the silence that followed and I suddenly became aware again of the magnetic pull that seemed to grow in the space between where we both stood.

It felt like all the hairs on my arms were standing up, like the air before a thunderstorm. Charged.

I bit my bottom lip. I couldn’t help it and even less so when I noticed his eyes flick down to my mouth. Oh, holy hell.

I watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed, which only brought my attention to the slight V of his shirt as it sat against his collar bones.

This didn’t feel like fan-girling. I’d fan-girled before when I’d met other celebrities whilst working here.

Those times had felt like the bubbles in a soft-drink, crackly and brief and enough sugar to make you giddy for a time.

This felt like the burn you got from drinking whiskey; heavy and deep as it warmed you from the inside out.

I felt like I wanted to reach forward and only my deeply ingrained propriety stilled my hand.

The moment was broken when a door down the corridor slammed shut, the sound like a crack in the silence of the room. He jumped slightly and I laughed to hide my embarrassment.

“Well, I don’t have any more drum kits to construct.” And then I obviously blacked out for a second because I could have sworn I heard him mutter, “shame”.

But, because the universe has a sense of humour, that was the moment that the (in)famous Trevor Kyle decided to stick his head round the door.

He jerked when he saw Jihoon, obviously surprised to see him in here. I unconsciously took a step back, studiously not seeing the way Jihoon tilted his head in my direction .

“Jihoon, you’re still here?” Trevor asked, a smile plastered on his face like wallpaper.

“Come, let me escort you downstairs.” He said all this with that smile, but the way he pushed the door open wider and held out his arm said very clearly this was not a suggestion.

Jihoon walked towards the door and grabbed his coat off the chair on his way. Trevor Kyle slid his eyes over to me and stared. The expression that passed over his face as his eyes skimmed over me made me uneasy. Like he was seeing me for the first time.

When Jihoon got to the door, he turned back to me and said, “Goodbye, Kaiya. That was fun.”

And to my surprise, I realised it HAD been fun.