Chapter 16

Ji-yeon and her father were having dinner in their apartment. Only about half an hour had passed since Soon-young had left the hotel, but Ji-yeon was already really looking forward to seeing him again the next day.

It had been an eventful day, starting off with the trip to Sinchon that she and her father had made in the morning. Since Ji-yeon was in her final year of high school, she was very curious about universities in Seoul and wanted to visit some of them. She and her father first went to Ewha Woman’s University, took some photos there and then walked across a small part of the campus towards Yonsei University. Ji-yeon was amazed at how big these universities were. She started to imagine her one year older self, walking there as one of the students. However, she knew that wouldn’t be a very likely scenario, since she was just an average student and Yonsei University was one of Korea’s best universities.

A little discouraged, she asked her father if they could leave the campus again. Ji-tae noticed her sad mood and suggested walking towards Sinchon station to have lunch somewhere on the way. He had heard that there were lots of good places to eat there. Ji-yeon agreed and they started walking again.

The closer they came to Sinchon station, the more music the father and daughter could hear. Ji-yeon looked curiously at a small crowd, gathered around someone singing in front of a few shops. The singer, a girl who looked like she was probably a few years older than Ji-yeon – she might have been a university student – was singing a cover of an English song that Ji-yeon didn’t know, but the people surrounding the girl all seemed to like it. It didn’t take long before Ji-yeon started tapping her foot, following the rhythm of the music. She wondered if this was what her classmates meant when they were talking about how much fun busking was. Experiencing it herself, she now understood why they all liked it so much.

"Dad, can we wait here just a little longer?" Ji-yeon asked her father pleadingly.

Ji-tae looked at her with a loving smile, glad to see his daughter happy again. "Of course. If you wait here, I’ll go see if I can find a nice place to have lunch."

Ji-yeon nodded and Ji-tae started to walk further down the street. After a few minutes he came back, having found a restaurant he liked. They waited until the singer’s second song had finished before they walked to the restaurant together. Ji-yeon noticed another crowd forming almost next to the restaurant, but this time she couldn’t hear any music. Her curiosity got the best of her and she approached the crowd, finding a spot that allowed her to see what was going on in the middle of the crowd. There were five guys in the middle, ready to... dance?

A feeling of panic went through her body. For the past years, she had tried to avoid watching other people dance, especially people around her age. Even when there were student performances at her school, she didn’t want to go see it if dancing was involved.

She took a step backwards, getting ready to leave, but that was when the music started to play and the dancers began with their first moves. Part of Ji-yeon told her to quickly run away, while another part of her felt reluctant to leave. She was curious and decided to wait a few more seconds before choosing to either leave or to stay.

The five guys who were dancing looked serious – they were evidently not just fooling around. Ji-yeon noticed that they were not completely in sync, but definitely close enough. And they... they were obviously enjoying what they were doing. They clearly loved dancing. Their enthusiasm was contagious and people in the circle around them were starting to move to the music as well. Even Ji-yeon had quickly forgotten that she had actually wanted to leave, that she shouldn’t be watching this performance in the first place. For once, her mind wasn’t occupied with thoughts about failure or comparisons, she was just enjoying the performance. Part of her even wanted to walk to the middle of the circle and start dancing alongside the other five dancers.

Ji-tae watched his daughter from a distance and understood that lunch would have to wait.

Before Ji-yeon really realised that she was doing something she hadn’t done in many years, the five guys had already finished their second dance. They were now advertising their Instagram page to the spectators, who were starting to leave now that the performance was over. Since Ji-yeon was one of the last people left – lost in thoughts – one of the dancers walked up to her and gave her a card with the name of their dance group and social media information. 

"What did you think?" he asked as he gave her a small smile.

Ji-yeon was slowly waking up from some sort of trance, so she could only utter a soft but genuine "It was cool."

"Great! If you’ve taken a video, please send it to us later!" he replied before he turned around to help the other guys pack their equipment.

Ji-tae walked towards his daughter until they stood side by side. "Not bad, don’t you think?" He asked rhetorically. Mr. Hong had watched the performance from a distance and was positively surprised by Ji-yeon’s interest. The last time he had seen her enjoying a dance performance must have been ten years ago. He smiled to himself as he thought the day that he could finally see his daughter dance might come sooner than he had expected.

Now, at the dinner table, Ji-yeon was thinking back to the performance. She had never expected it could be so much fun to see other people dance. The enthusiasm of those dancers had evoked memories of the period when Ji-yeon had just started dancing. The period when she danced without any worries. When dancing always felt great. Whenever she danced, the song that she danced to would feel different from when she just listened to it. Unfortunately, that strong connection with music was something she hadn’t really been able to feel in a long time.

Nevertheless, the enthusiasm that she always used to feel when she danced, didn’t feel like a distant memory anymore. Soon-young’s enthusiasm had been just as contagious as that of the five dancers she saw earlier that day – or probably even more.

Thanks to her rediscovered passion for dancing, coming up with new ideas for the choreography that she was making with Soon-young wasn’t that difficult. Once she and her father got back to the hotel that day, she went straight to the dance room and practised until Soon-young arrived. She was looking forward to showing him some new moves and practising together again, but Soon-young looked serious and somewhat nervous. He wanted to tell her something and let her listen to a song that she had heard many times at school: Adore U. Although Seventeen had only debuted a few months ago, they were actually quite popular among her classmates, probably because all the members were around their age.

Then Soon-young suggested they’d watch the music video. Having watched a dance performance that day, Ji-yeon’s worries had faded and she wasn’t so reluctant to watch the music video of Adore U, even though she realised the video could contain dance scenes. She hoped watching other people dance would continue to make her feel so happy.

However, she didn’t have much time to look at the dancing before a familiar faced popped up on the screen, which left her confused. She was pretty sure it was Soon-young, and she looked at her friend in astonishment. At first she didn’t know what to think and just continued to watch the video, as if she was looking at it in search of answers. It slowly dawned on her that her friend was a member of this group. Her surprise quickly turned into a feeling of happiness. When they were young, she and Soon-young had promised each other to continue dancing, and now Soon-young’s career actually involved dancing! But then she suddenly wondered why Soon-young hadn’t told her any of this. It was good news, wasn’t it?

When Soon-young told her the reason, she felt so touched that she hugged him. It had been years since the last time they hugged each other, so it should have probably felt awkward, but it didn’t.

After Ji-yeon had asked Soon-young a bunch of questions about Seventeen they started on the choreography again and it went very smoothly. They showed each other the ideas that they had come up with individually. Now that Ji-yeon was thinking back to this, she was surprised that she didn’t feel uncomfortable dancing in front of Soon-young anymore. Not uncomfortable at all, unlike one day earlier. While they were dancing today, Soon-young actually looked a lot more comfortable too. Probably because he had been afraid of letting her know the truth of him being an idol, and now he finally got it off his chest.

To Ji-yeon, it felt amazing to work together to create a choreography. Normally, when she was working by herself, there were many times when she was not satisfied with a part of the choreography, but even after changing it again and again, it just didn’t seem to work out. But now, when there was a part she struggled with, Soon-young could help her, and when he wasn’t sure what to do with the next part, Ji-yeon managed to think of something. Although she had created countless choreographies for the past ten years, it had never been as much fun as today.

"Are you done eating?" Ji-tae asked suddenly, waking Ji-yeon up from her thoughts.

"Huh?" Ji-yeon looked from her plate, that was still completely filled with food, to her father’s, that was completely empty. She must have spent minutes lost in thoughts while her father finished his food.

"You don’t have to finish it if you don’t want to." Her father told her.

"No, no, no." Ji-yeon said quickly, not wanting to waste the food. Besides, it wasn’t like she didn’t feel like eating anything, she had just been too busy looking back on her day to realise that she was actually quite hungry. "No need, I’ll finish it."

"I know I’m not the best cook, but please remember that we made this together, so you should at least partly like it." Ji-tae joked. "Your mom will arrive the day after tomorrow, so until then you’ll have to bear with me."

"Dad, you know it’s not because of the food."

"Yes, but I wonder what else it can be. Judging by the grin on your face, it must be something good." He pointed out.

Ji-yeon suddenly felt a little embarrassed. She hadn’t noticed that she’d been smiling.

"So at what time will he come tomorrow?" Ji-tae asked, knowing that Ji-yeon would understand who he was talking about.

"Sometime in the evening. He said he’d let me know later." She replied before sticking her spoon in her rice bowl and getting ready to eat some of it. She paused when she saw a knowing smile on her father’s face. He must have known that Soon-young was the one she was thinking about.

"Uhm, dad, I–" she began, but she actually had no idea how to finish her sentence.

Her father just looked at her lovingly. "It’s good to see you smile a lot these days."

Is anyone still reading this?