Page 8 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)

“ O k, cool. Well, don’t mind me, I’ll just crack on.” I smiled as I indicated the boxes of stuff all around the room. He flashed me the universal hand gesture for ‘okay’.

With as much grace as I had – scant ? I sat down on the floor cross-legged and pulled the nearest box towards me.

The cursed box of cables I sported a mottled blue bruise on my hip for, which I now had the arduous task of winding properly and tagging with the right colour zip tie so its purpose was immediately identifiable.

Certified donkey work.

I almost wasn’t surprised when Jihoon sat down in front of me, on the other side of the plastic box, although he did so far more gracefully than I had, folding in on himself like origami.

“Can I help?” he asked, quietly.

I looked at him for a moment, cocking my head to the side.

He was so different to all the media I’d ever seen of him.

He was clearly bare-skinned. I could see the scars on his face and his eyes, while dark and earnest, were normal.

No contacts, no liner. For some reason, it made me feel more at ease around him .

“You don’t have to,” I said, my voice making it quite clear ? I hoped ? that he didn’t need to feel obligated to help just because he was sharing the same space as me.

“I know,” he said, “I want to. It’s… normal.” And I think I got it.

“Alright then,” I conceded, “we need to sort these cables by type.” I grabbed a handful to show him.

“TRS cable,” I laid it next to the green zip ties. “Speakon cables,” went next to the red zip ties. “Banana plug-”

“Yellow?” he interrupted me, forcing me to look up at him in surprise. He was grinning and I laughed.

“Ha, yeah, exactly. Now you’re getting it.” We shared a companionable smile. He watched how I looped the cables around my elbow and hand to form a neat loop before I tied it off with the correct colour, before he picked up a speakon cable and copied the loop and tied it off with a red zip tie.

“Perfect,” I said, nodding approvingly. He nodded back and that was that.

We went through the box, identifying, looping and tying the cables in silence, only broken by the occasional check-in from Jihoon; “This one?”

“RCA, pink.”

And then we’d fall into silence again.

It was… nice. His presence was calming, now that I’d gotten used to it. He was a real person after all. I smiled as the thought crossed my mind. I saw his eyes flick up to my face, although he said nothing.

At about 9:30, his manager came by. He said something to Jihoon in Korean and Jihoon answered, barely looking up, before the manager went away again.

I looked at the door in confusion. I’d expected him to pull Jihoon away.

At my quizzical look, he said, “Ah, the producer, he is still working. I am not needed just now.” I made an ‘ah’ sort of noise.

“Is that your manager?” I asked, nodding my head towards the door. Jihoon looked up at the door before looking back to me.

“Yes. Youngsoo.”

“Youngsoo,” I repeated, trying to make sure I got the inflection right .

“You’re English?” he asked. I guess the accent gave me away.

“Yes.” I reached for a green zip tie.

“Where from?” he asked.

“London now, but originally, I’m from the North of England. A place called the Lake District.”

Jihoon shook his head. “I don’t know it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said wistfully, “full of mountains and rolling hills.” Impulsively, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Can I show you?” Blame it on my nostalgia, but for some reason, I wanted to show him where I hailed from.

At his nod, I unlocked my phone and pulled up some pictures from Google. I turned my phone to show him.

“Wow,” he exclaimed, “so pretty.” He looked up at me with that smile I was beginning to live for. I grinned back.

“You’re from Seoul, right?” I asked as I looped and tied the last cable.

He nodded enthusiastically. “You know Seoul?”

I winced, “Ah, no, sorry.” That was literally the extent of my knowledge of his background.

He didn’t seem to mind though as he whipped out his own phone and pulled up some pictures.

“Whoa, that’s so dope!” I exclaimed as he proudly showed me pictures of Seoul lit up at night.

“Do you miss it?” I asked, looking up at him. He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. He leaned back on his other arm, the very picture of casual.

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “but we travel so much, we do so much. There’s not much time to get… homesick,” he said, finding the words.

I nodded, mirroring his pose and leaning back on my hands.

“I get that,” I said. Since moving to LA, I hadn’t had time to miss home.

I think it kind of helped that my time here had an expiry date on it, though.

My contract only ran for a year, and after that my Visa expired.

I’d been playing around with the idea of finding another job after Pisces. LA was growing on me.

“Knock, knock” said a gruff voice at the door, followed by someone actually booting the door, by the sound of it. A moment later, the door opened all the way, albeit a bit forcefully, and in the doorway stood Jeremy, his arms full of one, two, no three soft guitar cases.

“Special deliv…ery...” He trailed off as his eyes went from where I sat on the floor, to where Jihoon sat.

He froze for a moment before his grip seemed to slip and one of the cases lurched alarmingly downward. “Oo fuck,” grunted Jeremy, trying to re-balance and hold it all.

Immediately, both Jihoon and I jumped to our feet and rushed towards him, each of us grabbing a guitar and catching the slipping one until Jeremy stood there, eyeballing us, his eyebrows so far into his hairline they may never come all the way back down.

I turned around quickly to hide my grin and caught Jihoon with the same expression, leaning a case carefully against the wall.

Jeremy hadn’t moved, he still had the same pose as if he was still holding three guitar cases.

“You okay there, boss?” I asked.

“Yeeeeah,” he answered, slowly. “Do I uh, do I wanna…

" he waved an arm vaguely in the direction of Jihoon.

“Nope. No, I do not.” He proclaimed, evidently finishing his own thought.

“Those just arrived, obviously a couple days late, but whatever, what do I know,” Jeremy grumbled, running a finger over his chin.

“Do they need tuning, as well?” I asked, hands on my hips.

“I’m tempted to tell you to sack it off, but…” he sighed.

“It’s not worth the trouble?” I offered.

Jeremy threw his hands in the air. “You said it, kid.” He turned on his heel and walked back out of the room. I only had a split second to look at Jihoon, before Jeremy stomped back in.

“Someone knows he’s here, yeah?” He frowned at me, his mouth an unhappy pinch.

Jihoon stepped forward and held out his hand to a surprised Jeremy. “Yes sir, my management is aware.”

“Well, yeah, alright then.” Jeremy shook Jihoon’s hand but narrowed his eyes as he looked between the two of us.

“Just…” he trailed off and released his hand.

“Nope. Nope, not even gonna start. Nope. Not my monkey, not my circus.” He turned around and left again.

We could hear him muttering all the way down the co rridor until his stream of mutterings was cut off by the sound of the stairwell door slamming shut.

I looked at Jihoon. He looked at me. I pinched my lips together.

And then I snorted.

Fucking. Snorted.

I slapped my hand over my mouth and looked at Jihoon, my eyes so wide my eyebrows strained.

He burst out laughing. At me, with me, who even knew. And then we were both laughing. I mean, doubled-up, holding our stomachs, howling.

“Poor Jeremy,” I said weakly, wiping tears off my cheeks. Yet another reason to be grateful I never bothered with much makeup ? besides the fact that I had zero skills at applying it.

“He seems very stressed,” Jihoon commented, still grinning.

“He’s a busy lad,” I agreed, walking over to where I’d placed one of the guitars.

Unzipping the soft case, I ran my fingers lightly over the strings before making a face of disgust. Completely out of tune.

I gently lifted it out and flipped it over in my hands. It was a Gibson Hummingbird, an acoustic with fantastic harmonics. I hummed in approval, running my hands gently down the finished wood.

“You play?”

“A bit,” I said distractedly as I crossed the room and sat in the big, padded chair. I crossed one leg over the other, balancing the ‘Bird and began to carefully turn the pegs, making sure to keep my hand away from the neck, only strumming here and there to check the sound.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jihoon had unzipped another guitar from its case. He pulled up another chair, not far away from mine, and began to fiddle with the tuning pegs.

Surprised, I looked up from my task to observe.

“You play?” I asked, mirroring his earlier words.

He flashed me a small smile and replied, “a bit.”

“These strings are factory fresh,” I muttered as one slipped beneath my hand.

“Yes.” He replied, frowning.

But a couple of minutes and some tentative strumming later, we were done .

I strummed a few chords, just to make sure. The sound out of this thing was honestly such a treat, I couldn’t help myself.

Smiling slyly, I looked up at Jihoon from underneath my lashes, waiting to see his reaction. I was a handful of bars in before he noticed and laughed.

“Broken Promise?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

I looked back down at my fingers, tapping my foot in time with the beat I could hear in my head. “It’s your song — you tell me.” I quirked the corner of my lips in a half-smile.

“You asked me before,” he said, his gaze shifting to the instrument in his hands, “if I ever get homesick. I do, but not for Seoul. I grew up in Busan.” He paused, his fingers brushing over the strings.

“I miss Busan. I wrote this song about what I thought my life was going to be — back when I lived there. Before I moved to Seoul. Before GVibes.”

I froze mid-strum. I hadn’t known he’d written ‘Broken Promise,’ much less the reason behind it. Hearing him talk about why he wrote it struck a chord deep within me. It felt like a parallel to my own feelings — those quiet, bittersweet aches I sometimes felt, when I let myself think too deeply.

Something shifted inside me, an unseen string between us.

I was so distracted that I didn’t realize I’d started playing the intro over again until Jihoon slid his fingers up the strings.

He counted himself in by tapping his fingers on the body of the ‘Bird before picking up the tune with me. He strummed for a bit and then started to quietly sing along, taking over all of the other vocal line parts and turning the solo into an acoustic performance.

The smile on my face was so wide, it almost hurt.

It wasn’t to last .

We played our way through 'Broken Promise', 'Basket Case' by Green Day, and were half-way through the introduction to Metallica’s 'Enter Sandman' when his manager, Youngsoo, came looking for him.

Jihoon knelt in front of my chair as he carefully put away the guitar, looking up at me to smile as he zipped up the bag.

Holy hell. Everyone always talks about dimples being this amazing feature and I never really cared for them, but when this boy in front of me smiled at me and I saw those dimples…

my breath literally caught in my chest. I bit my lip.

I knew I was doing it, just like I knew my eyelids lowered slightly at the same time.

I know what this look on my face felt like.

The sight of Jihoon on his knees in front of me sent me somewhere and by the assessing look on his face, he knew it too. I tried to rein it in, but it was an effort.

After an eternity, he rose to his considerable full height. He placed the guitar carefully on the table against the far wall and moved to the door, where Youngsoo stood waiting, hopefully oblivious to the exchange we’d just had. Or, at least I’d had.

Jihoon put one hand on the door frame and turned back to look at me.

“Thank you for the fun,” he said, smiling at me. It wasn’t a small, shy smile, nor was it that big, famous smile. This was a different one altogether; it was one that made me tuck my leg tighter over the other and made my fingers clench around the neck of the guitar I held.

Holy hell.