Chapter 42 – The Good and the Bad

The next day I went to the studio again.

I tried to not show up too early, and the guard didn’t fight me this time.

Jin was in the booth when I showed up, but I only got to see him for about 5 minutes before he was done and it was Jungkook’s turn. True to his name, the Golden Maknae did everything in a single take and then spent the next 20 minutes gloating about it. I mean I didn’t actually understand what he was saying, but from Jin and Jimin’s annoyed expressions, it was obvious he was gloating. (the little happy dance also might’ve been a giveaway).

Taehyung didn’t seem to care, because I was there, and all he did was play with my fingers as he related various anecdotes to me, and translated what the producers where doing and why he wasn’t being called in even though it was his turn. Eventually, Kookie got bored of annoying everyone and announced that he was going out for coffee, dragging Jimin along with him. And finally, after over 45 minutes, they called Tae to sing his part and he walked into the booth, blowing me a kiss and a wink, but turning professional after the first scolding word from one of the producers.

I watched him with a smile on my face. It was fascinating, this transformation. And he was so beautiful when he was concentrating this hard; there was nothing else but the music.

After a moment, Namjoon came to sit next to me.

“So how’s it going?” he asked, in his casual English. He looked so cute and funny like this to me: a black beanie completely covered his hair, and he wore an oversized black hoodie with giant black-rimmed glasses perched over his nose. He looked both serious and silly all at the same time, and yet still frustratingly attractive. But it was nice to hear an English voice amidst all the Korean.

We chatted a bit as I tried to listen to Tae who kept messing up his lines for some reason – I think he was distracted because Namjoon was next to me – but in the end, I benefitted since I got to hear his beautiful voice a lot longer than Jungkook’s.

Namjoon asked me about my work and my new place. I said I hadn’t started yet but that at least the apartment was starting to look like a home. He suggested we should all have a welcoming party and I laughed saying that it was so small, all of them probably wouldn’t fit in there.

“It’s not smaller than your Japan place, is it?” he asked, with a little smirk.

“No, thank god!” I replied.

“Remember when we ended up all drunk in there that one time?” he smiled wider and the dimple pop.

I laughed, remembering. I HAD forgotten, somehow. How crazy had that been? And how long ago did it seem… but… it was only a year ago or so… not even… wow…

“Yeah but that wasn’t all 7 of you…” I protested.

“We could make it work…” he winked, and I blushed, quite against my will.

Just then, he got a call on his phone – which he had to take, he apologized – and left in a huff 5 minutes later, with a quick goodbye and promise to talk more later.

I kept on watching Taehyung, and oddly enough, after Namjoon had left, he managed to finish his part with very few mistakes.

When he came out, he didn’t even wait for permission, or the next guy to be called in, he just grabbed my hand and dragged me out.

“Where are we going??” I asked, struggling to put my jacket on as I realized he was taking me out of the building.

“Your house” he answered, still dragging me, “I have maybe one hour before they see I’m not there.”

I just stared at him, too stunned to laugh at first and then it just burst out of me.

“What?” he finally stopped walking and turned to look at me with that clueless face that looked both dumb and cute and again I laughed, which seemed to frustrate him more.

“No, it’s fine.” I looked down, forcing my laughter away before looking up at him and lacing my arms around his neck. “Let’s go to my place” I said, staring at him, and the lust in my eyes seemed to shut him up from whatever he was going to say.

I know he wanted to kiss me, but we were just outside the BigHit building, so instead he just turned around and hailed a taxi to my place. Once we got there, he literally threw me on his back, (I protested) taking the stairs two at the time, only letting go of me, after having punched in the door code, and bursting into my room.

“One hour” he reminded me, after having thrown me on the bed.

I had a mind to shove him off, not having appreciated the potato-sack treatment so much, but he was grinning so ily as he advanced predatorily towards me that I gave up all resistance as soon as his lips met mine.

***

They recorded for about one more week, and I started my job. It was totally different than teaching in a school, but it was fun. The classes were smaller and you could chat with the students, who were older than what I was used to, and often understood things more quickly.

Any kind of big life change is always pretty scary, and you always wonder in the back of your mind “Did I up leaving the good thing I had going?”, but all in all, it was pretty good.

Of course, everything couldn’t be perfect. I also started my Korean lessons right away.

Kim Taekyeon, albeit a pretty good-looking 28yo. man, did not like me. He didn’t like that he was forced to give me private lessons; didn’t like that I knew nothing at all about the language; and also, I suspect, he didn’t like that I was somehow in such good graces with Mr. Baek for no apparent reason. Therefore, he made our classes as painful as he could possibly make them. We had them every day – any time one of us had a break in our schedule at the same time – but even after two weeks, I felt like I’d learned almost nothing.

At first, even though I told him I’d studied it on my own, he made me go over the entire alphabet before even starting to teach me basic greetings. I’m also pretty sure he was using the preschool curriculum on me too. Or he just enjoyed treating me like an idiot.

But that was the only bad point in my seemingly perfect new life. Well, that and the fact that it was freezing cold. Although having a boyfriend who advertised for a sportswear company ended up not being too bad either, when he showed up one evening with four giant bags of PUMA wear – one of which contained an enormous white winter jacket he gave to me – which he said he’d gotten for free after spending the entire day shooting for the brand’s new collection.

But yeah, the school year started, and with it, an influx of new students, and just like we’d dreamed, me living here meant I got to see Taehyung almost every day (unless he had an international schedule). It also meant I got almost no sleep, but who needs sleep when you’re young (sorta…) and in love?? Even the boys grew jealous of Taehyung’s no-longer-single life – or so he said – and the only stain on mine truly remained Taekyeon’s awful Korean lessons.

I was complaining about it to Tae one night in bed, after he’d asked how my Korean was coming along, and the next day, I noticed a drastic change; I didn’t make the link at first, but though he was actually teaching me useful things now, Taekyeon-sshi seemed angrier than ever. I was ambivalent in my feelings. I knew this couldn’t be a coincidence. I suspected my baby boy had made a phone call to his uncle about my situation, and though it didn’t please me to have him interfere on my behalf, the results were at least positive, so I started actually a learning stuff.

But after the last week of February, I didn’t see Taehyung so much. He was busy shooting concept pictures for his new album, recording secret videos he refused to talk about, and going off on trips to other parts of Asia for various concerts or events. But every time he could find a break, he would sneak into my little apartment and we’d have a few stolen moments together before he’d have to get back. I like to think that these moments were as precious to him as they were to me.

Also, unlikely as it was, Eujung-unnie and I struck up an odd sort of silent friendship and hung out quite a bit. Even back when Taekhyeon was still being uncooperative, she would take me out for coffee and show me videos of the boys on her phone. In fact, I think I learned more from her – both in the Korean language, and about Tae’s worklife – than from the actual concerned individuals. And when I finally did officially start learning something at school, I also got to practice my newly acquired Korean with her and she was a much kinder teacher than stupid Taekyeon.

So slowly, days turned into weeks, and my first month in Korea came and went. But as March unfolded, so did culture shock and the reality of what I had done. It wasn’t so bad, really, except that I missed Japan terribly. I missed my friends, and being able to talk to people if I had an issue. I missed food that wasn’t just a mush of stuff mixed together that burned your tongue and most of all, I missed my boyfriend, whom I had moved to this country for and felt like I had probably seen a grand total of 5 hours in the entire month. But still, there were moments that made it all worth it.

Like the day he showed up at my door, at 9 in the morning, with bright red-orange hair, and crazy blue contacts. He actually rang the doorbell so I would go open the door and he could shock me. They’d just flown back from shooting the new album cover in Jeju, and this was the new album look, he said. He had to dye his hair back as soon as he went home, but he had wanted to show me.

I just stood there blinking at him. It was a day off and I’d been woken up by the doorbell, so I wasn’t sure I wasn’t actually dreaming this alien-like version of my boyfriend, standing on my doorstep in the morning sunshine.

“You don’t like?” he asked, pouting at my silence.

“Tae, it’s like 7am on a Sunday” I yawned.

“It’s 9.” he corrected me.

“Whatever.” I rubbed my eyes and blinked again, “Too early…” I yawned.

His smile dropped. “I’m sorry… we just came back from Jeju shooting… I have to change the hair back today… I wanted to show you…” he said, sounding so much like a hurt puppy that it woke me up better than if he had slapped me in the face.

“Babe…” I put a hand to his cheek, taking a step closer, “Wait, what’s up with your eyes?”

“They’re blue!” he exclaimed, grinning again, “Like yours!” he leaned in, super-close, so I could have a look and I couldn’t help but laugh as I pulled back.

“My eyes are not that radioactive color…” I protested.

“Radio…what? What it means?” he made an adorably confused face though.

I pulled him closer, bringing him inside. “Nevermind. I love this hair though,” I added, running my hand through it. It was so incredibly soft. It had gotten longer since I’d last seen him, too. But how did they manage to keep it so soft, dying it so often??? I couldn’t stop touching it, and he giggled. “Noona likes it?” he asked, putting his arms around my waist and pulling me closer. “unnn” I muttered, my Japanese-like agreement and he smiled more. “I go back in one hour, so enjoy now.” he said, looking deeply into my eyes.

“One hour?!” I exclaimed, before giving him my best puppy look.

“You talk long it become 59 minutes…” he smirked at me.

“Kim Taehyung…” I narrowed my eyes at him, but he shut me up with a kiss, putting both hands on either side of my face to hold it, as if I would somehow run away if he didn’t. As if I would want to.

We kissed for 5 whole minutes without stopping, and when he finally pulled back, a millimeter away, our noses still touching and his eyes locked onto mine; we were both panting.

“I missed you…” I whispered, unable to catch my breath.

“I missed you.” he repeated, and I could see the lust in his eyes, even obstructed as they were by the contacts.

He lifted me into his arms and walked me over to the bedroom, kissing me again. This time more gently, but no less needily. My pajama was on the floor in less than 5 seconds, and we both tore at his clothes as he deposited me on the bed and tried to keep on kissing me at the same time. We didn’t make love that day: we had hot crazy . And it was amazing. y, tanned, red-haired Taetae was a huge turn on, and so was the rush; after all, we did only have 52 minutes….

Once our time was up, he reluctantly put his clothes back on and started with the goodbye kisses.

“Wait!” I said, putting a hand up to his face and running to the dresser to get my phone.

“Since this is gonna be gone soon, I want picture-proof!” I demanded.

“What?” he asked, confused by my difficult English.

“Selcas!”

He laughed. “Boss will be angry.”

“I won’t put them online, come ooooooonnnnn….” I pouted, in the cutest/iest face I could muster, and I guess it worked because he ended up rolling his eyes and pulling me to his side, flashing a piece sign. “Ok. Go.”

So for the next 5 minutes, we took a slew of ridiculous selfies, both with my phone and his, and then finally, he really had to leave and I reluctantly let him go.