Page 12 of Hamartia

Heart pounding in my chest, I glance up to look at his face in the mirror. My breath catches when I find him watching me, the smallest semblance of a smile on his face, eyes dark and skin pale and smooth as marble under the crappy lighting.

“It’s Jaehyun right?” I hear myself ask.

Fuck, is that my voice? It echoes clumsily around the bathroom sounding nervous and unstable. I’m not ready for what he says next.

“And you are Raphael.”

He turns off the tap and shakes his hands gently into the sink before reaching for a hand towel.

He knows my name. Some weird noise goes off in my head. He knows my fucking name. I mean, a lot of people know my name but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that he might.

“Yeah, hey man.”

I do some stupid fucking wave thing at him before turning off the tap.

Jaehyun hands me a towel and then we’re both standing there drying our hands while we look at each other.

“So, you’re meeting with the label? I thought you guys were with YJK? That’s under Sonar, right?”

When his eyes narrow, I get a weird flutter of panic behind my ribs. I just told him I know what label he’s on. Is that weird? Is that something only an obsessed stalker would know? Is that why he’s looking at me like that? I decide that no, it’s completely normal. I’m a musician. Of course, I know who is and isn’t signed to the same label I am.

“I was meeting with an artist on the label,” he tells me somewhat tightly. Like it’s none of my fucking business. Which it isn’t. Vaguely, I notice his English is smoother than I remember it being, a little less awkward and stumbling than it was in the Paris speech. I’d noticed it in his more recent videos too.

“Ah, cool, gotchu.” Though everything in me tells me he has no desire to share it with me, I ask anyway. “You not gonna say who? It a secret?” I offer some dumb grin that gets stuck partway on my face.

He looks confused, like he can’t understand why I even care. He folds up his towel and drops it gently into the wicker waste basket before turning back to me.

“It is not yet agreed so I cannot really talk about it.”

I nod. “That’s cool, dude, I totally get that. Collab is cool though. A track with you and a western artist is gonna fly whoever it is. Hope it works out. Can’t wait to hear it.”

Is this what they call verbal diarrhea? Have I said anything of any substance yet? My ears feel hot.

Jaehyun nods, smiling politely, and then backs away from me towards the door the way you might back away from a crazy homeless person.

“Goodbye, Raphael.”

“Yeah. Nice meeting you, man.” I say.

He throws a last enigmatic look over his shoulder, nods again, and then he’s gone, door swinging shut behind him. I can only blink after him, a little stunned, a little panicked as the sound of his footsteps echo away from me outside.

Then I practically fold into myself with embarrassment, hanging off the counter with a groan.

“You fucking moron. You actual fucking moron.”

As I straighten, I spot it.

The Gucci covered phone with LJH lettering still sitting there on the counter. I grab it and turn it over, bolting towards the door. I glance down at it just as the screensaver lights up. It’s him holding a cat up for a kiss. A furry white thing with bright blue eyes and a pink nose. It’s cute as fuck.

I pull open the bathroom door at the same time it’s pushed open and it fucks me, hard, in the face. Pain bursts across my nose and I hear what I’m sure is a sickening crunch as blood starts to pour from it.

Jaehyun makes a horrified gasping sound, his eyes going comically wide.

“You forgot your phone,” I mumble, holding it out with one hand as I cover my bleeding nose with the other.

It feels utterly surreal, I think, as I glance across the back seat at him.

He’s talking quietly on the phone in Korean, his head slightly turned so I can’t see his expression. Though I’ve not a clue what he’s saying, he doesn’t sound angry. Like he’s pissed off at having to ferry my clumsy ass to the ER.