Page 14 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

W alking through the crowded shopping centre with Jihoon at my side felt…

dangerous. Unlike in the States, where GVibes were only respectably famous, in South Korea they were incredibly famous.

The fact that he was walking beside me was extraordinary enough, but that he was also holding my hand… unthinkable.

It made me recall the first couple of times we’d ventured out in public; Jihoon hadn’t even dared hold my hand, and yet here we were; nine months later and casually strolling through a busy mall in Seoul, holding hands.

I glanced down at where our hands were joined. I felt my heart swell, overflowing with so many different, but complementing emotions.

Jihoon glanced over, his coffee brown eyes meeting mine and then crinkling at the sides at whatever expression he saw on my face.

For a while we just wandered around, looking in the windows of a few different shops, until I spotted an Olive Young and dragged Jihoon inside.

I had briefly explained in the car ride here that I wanted to stop and replace the cosmetics I hadn’t brought with me, scant as they were.

I’d run out of those little samples from the plane, and honestly, I needed a medal for how long I’d managed to make them last.

Jihoon had an enviable skincare routine: I’d watched him in the mornings and evenings as he dutifully followed a precise order of application. I had absolutely no idea what half of it was, or did, but considering he looked the way he did, it obviously did something.

So, I wasn’t completely surprised when he cheerfully agreed to help me shop for skincare.

My previous skincare decisions were based entirely on whatever smelt the nicest, or whatever happened to be on sale.

Jihoon had no such restrictions, and he was determined in his self-appointed role as my skincare consultant.

It was fun in the kind of way that if you tried to explain to someone how you’d had fun picking out skin toners, they wouldn’t get it, no matter how hard you tried to explain it to them.

We spent almost as long in Olive Young as we had in Misun’s clothing boutique and came out with almost as much, not including the incredible amount of free samples the sales clerk had put in the bags.

Jihoon had had to stand a few feet away, discreetly pretending to inspect a life-size cardboard cutout of an idol from another group while I’d paid for my new skincare.

He’d been adorably put out when I’d pointed out I’d have to pay for it myself, because there was no way the sales clerk with the GVibes icon pinned to her lanyard wouldn’t recognise the mysterious, hat- wearing boyfriend handing over his credit card.

He’d reluctantly agreed, and stood far enough away so as to not draw attention.

He took the bag from me as soon as I walked over to where he stood.

“Anyone you know?” I asked, tilting my head at the smiling idol.

“He is my hoobae, Min Taeyang.” Jihoon said, and my mind raced to connect the word until, like flipping to the right page in the dictionary, my brain helpfully supplied the answer: hoobae, a person who is a junior or less experienced.

Jihoon, obviously not party to my mental dictionary search, continued; “He is part of Sol8. They debuted only two years ago.”

Which made Jihoon, and GVibes, their ‘sunbaes’. I gave myself a mental high-five, pleased that I was retaining some useful information.

“He has excellent skincare,” I commented neutrally.

Jihoon snorted. “He smokes a lot. It won’t last.”

I looked up sharply, his tone so out-of-place, but with his hat and face mask on, so much of his face was covered that I couldn’t see his reaction. With all the people milling around us, this was not the place to ask, so I filed it away for future.

We’d been wandering around pretty aimlessly for a few minutes when I stopped dead in my tracks.

Jihoon didn’t notice immediately, and would have kept on walking, were it not for my hand that was still tightly holding onto Jihoon’s, pulling him back.

He looked back at me in surprise, but all I could do was grin, pointing at a nearby sign that was a mix of English and Hangul and most notably, some cutesy cartoon characters, all pointing to the basement level where the words, K-POP Plaza were prominently printed.

I stood there, pointing and watched as his eyes traced the line of my arm to my finger.

As he read the words, he groaned and rolled his head back on his shoulders

“Really?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

He stood there for a moment, silent as though asking for patience, but even with the face mask on, I saw the curve of his lips, and the way his eyes crinkled at the sides.

We took the escalator down to B1, and I was practically vibrating the entire way down, hanging off of Jihoon’s arm like an excited toddler.

Coming off the escalator at the bottom, my head swung from side to side, searching out the multi-coloured sign, but I needn’t have worried about trying to spot it, when all I needed to do was tilt my head to listen to the pounding K-pop music that came from further down.

I headed in that direction, following my ears until we were stood outside the most ostentatious, brightly-coloured, chaotic storefront I had ever seen.

There were streamers hanging in the windows made up of various idol’s head-shots, and there were figurines everywhere, staged in various scenes.

One of the plate glass windows was entirely plastered in photo cards.

There was even a group cardboard cutout standing prominently outside.

It was one of those photo stages, where there’s a hole cut out where you were supposed to go behind and put your head through and get your picture taken.

I didn’t recognise the group, but there was a gaggle of young girls taking turns having their pictures taken in it.

It was… overwhelming. I’m not sure what I had been expecting, but Mr Magorium’s K-pop Toy emporium was not it.

“Holy hell,” I breathed. Jihoon, who was stood like a statue next to me, sighed loudly.

“Seriously?” he muttered.

“Oh, absolutely.” I said gleefully, pulling him forward – dragging was really the better term.

Walking into that store was like what I imagined being dunked headfirst into a pinata would feel like: colourful, noisy, and being whacked from all sides as people bustled past me, intent on whatever side-quest they were on.

I didn’t know where to start. I wanted it all.

Actually, scratch that: I knew exactly where to start, and I soon spotted the signs that took me where I needed to go.

Right into the GVibes section, because; of course.

“Jagiya, I can get you any of this, just tell me what you want.” Jihoon’s plaintive request didn’t sway me, but it did make it harder to contain my glee as I ran my hands lovingly over the plush toys in front of me.

“Which one’s yours?” I gestured to the super cute stuffies organised on the shelf in front of me under a brightly-coloured sign proudly proclaiming, ‘Viblets’.

For a moment, I didn’t think he’d respond, but then he reached out a graceful hand and plucked an adorable, soft-grey seal from the menagerie of other cutesy animal toys.

“Aww, he’s so cute!” I cooed over the plump, little seal toy. “He kinda looks like you.”

Jihoon scoffed. “He is my son, after all.”

I laughed, turning Jihoon’s Viblet character over in my hands.

“Look later, I don’t want to be here long,” he said, holding his hand over mine as he looked around nervously.

I followed his gaze, and no one was looking our way, but it did occur to me that this was either the safest place for him to be – who would ever suspect an idol to be in a place like this – or a very dangerous place for him.

His image was all around us, now that I took the time to look.

And while there were marked differences between the airbrushed, heavily made-up visuals of those CDs, photocards, posters and candy boxes, the real man standing next to me was unmistakably the same person. You just needed to look close enough.

I nodded. “Okay, just let me grab a couple albums and we can go.”

“Ky…” he whined, and I knew it was more a reaction to me spending money on his merch, rather than the time we were in here. Little did he know…

I enjoyed the confusion on his face when I headed away from the GVibes section and over to the Sol8 section.

Eight very perky, aesthetically pleasing faces looked out at me from every angle and, practically feeling Jihoon’s confusion, I grabbed a pack of photocards and held them up for his inspection.

“Which one should I get?” I asked, innocently. Watching his eyes narrow above his plain face mask filled me with glee, although I kept my face as straight as possible.

Without a word, he turned on his heel and strode back to the GVibes section.

By the time he walked back over to me, I had almost swallowed the laugh that was threatening to bubble out of me.

When he held out the pack of photo cards to me, with his face on the first card, I had to slap a hand over my mouth.

“I’ve told you before, jagiya; if you want to stare at a man, you will stare at me.”

His eyes held such intensity that I couldn’t help but follow his instruction, until they flicked away to look over my shoulder. “I will wait outside the store,” he said

Following the direction of his gaze, I looked over to see the busy front counter.

There was a queue of people lined up there, but what stood out more were the three young girls clustered together, darting glances in our direction.

I turned around fully and instinctively took a step away.

I didn’t hear Jihoon move behind me, but I felt a slight chill as he moved past me.

I didn’t turn around to follow his progress, but kept my eyes forward, keeping the girls in my line of sight as I moved towards the queue lining up for the till.

The girls paid me no attention whatsoever, but they did look towards the front of the store.

They talked too low, and in Korean, for me to hear, or understand, but they were whispering furiously – excitedly.

As I stood in the queue, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the first time Jihoon and I had gone out into public together, in Pacific Park. I wondered if we’d have to split up now, just as we had then.

By the time I got to the front of the queue, I felt like an ass for not seeing the danger-zone this entire store was.

I quickly paid, and then, with my shiny bag in my hand, I left the store and looked around. Not seeing Jihoon, I pulled out my phone and discovered a new Kakao message from him.

Joon

Meet me at Misun’s shop.

Sent 15:43

He didn’t need to write that it had been necessary for him to leave the area. Maybe those girls hadn’t actually been looking at him, but it was safer to assume they had been.

Guilt weighed heavily on me as I retraced our steps alone, hugging my shiny bag of merch tighter than I needed to, as I took the escalator up to walk back through the shopping centre to where we had begun.