“I wasn’t actually sick, appa,” Jisoo whined, balancing her phone in the crook of her neck as she returned a jug of juice back into the fridge. After she made a big deal about being sick, her manager had called her parents to report her condition. Naturally, her father called to see if she was okay.

“Just because I feel sick doesn’t mean that I am sick,” Jisoo said. “There’s a difference.”

Her slippers skidded across the hardwood past Blackpink’s common area, where the other girls were huddled around Rosé’s laptop, watching Chocolat. Jisoo didn’t want to disturb their viewing with her phone call, so she took herself back to her room as her father asked her if she was still taking those Chinese multivitamins he’d bought her last month.

“Yeah, I’ve been taking them. I have!” Jisoo said, shutting the door behind her lightly. “What? Why? Can we talk about that later? Well, because… because I’m at the dorms and… the girls…”

She closed her eyes and sighed as her father rambled on about the miraculous effects of natural medicine. When he was finally starting to wrap up, she mumbled: “Okay, I love you. Bye.”

Jisoo ended the call and then massaged her temples. She checked the digital clock on her bedside table and saw that it was still only 7pm. And she hadn’t had dinner yet. Lisa had placed an order for a jumbo-sized chicken box to be delivered to the dorms, but they would still have to wait about forty minutes in order for it to be delivered. In the meantime, Jisoo had been trying to keep her mind off of Jinyoung.

But she couldn’t get him out of her head. All she could think about was that moment their eyes met as he sang “I love you.” Just thinking out, her heart started pounding all over again. But the moment was short-lived, since her phone started buzzing with another phone call from her father.

“Appa?” Jisoo said tentatively but tiredly. “Yes! I already told you I did! I did. Ok. Ok. Ok. Yeah. Ok. Bye!”

She held her phone in one hand and was about to push herself off the bed with the other when the screen lit up again. With an exasperated breath, she prepared herself to tell her father to just text her since she wanted to watch Chocolat with the girls without having to run to her bedroom every five minutes.

“Hello? Appa?”

“Jisoo?” 

Her eyebrows shot up. That voice was not her appa. 

“Jinyoung?” she said, her voice breaking. Jinyoung laughed on the other end.

“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else,” he said cheerfully. Jisoo stood up, only because she couldn’t sit still. Her free hand ran through her hair, all flustered. She then pushed her palm against her face.

“Sorry, I thought you were my dad,” she said and then immediately blushed. “Not that you sound like him or that you sound old or are even anything like him, except maybe in the fact that you’re both nice and caring and— sorry, did you need something?”

Jinyoung laughed again, but then his voice grew quiet. He was silent for a while

“No. Ah. Actually I just… called to say hi,” he said. Jisoo’s shoulders relaxed though her cheeks still burned. He had called her before but the sensation of having his voice so close to her ear was always too much for her.

“Oh. Well, then… hi,” she said. She closed her eyes, as if to relish the sound of his voice better.

“You bolted so fast after recording today,” Jinyoung continued. “I was going to tell you that I thought you did a really good job today.”

Jisoo laughed nervously, crossing an arm over her chest and leaning against her bed frame.

“If only I could do better, though. I’m still stumbling over lines, and I keep forgetting that one guy’s name. Who is it again? The one from Seventeen?”

“Hoshi?”

Jisoo nodded. “Yeah. Ugh. Their fans must hate me.” 

“You’re overthinking it,” Jinyoung said reassuringly. “It was fine. Did the girls see the recording today?”

Jisoo scoffed. “Yeah, they watched it live,” she said, smiling. “They never miss an opportunity to see me make a fool of myself.”

“Lucky for me, Jackson’s really the only one who watches Inkigayo religiously just to see me being an idiot,” Jinyoung answered. “Although, on second thought, Jackson being Jackson, one person giving me over my mistakes is plenty.”

“I can’t imagine he’d be that critical, though,” she said, laughing. “And between the three of us, you make the least mistakes. Especially today, it is your song after all.”

Jisoo’s cheeks burned even warmer at the memory of that day’s special stage. She still wasn’t over the shaken feeling that had overcome her when his eyes met hers. Time seemed to have stopped. On the other end of the call, she could hear Jinyoung taking a deep breath.

“The ‘Confession Song,’” he said. “That’s right.”

They were quiet again. Jisoo started to panic. She wanted to say something to him that was genuine and would keep their happy conversation up, sustain it for longer. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as well.

“Your voice is so…” she said, starting her sentence out slow, wanting to say the right thing. “Your singing… You sing really well.”

It was true. Jisoo had always admired Jinyoung’s singing. She had been 18 or 19 when he debuted in JJ Project, and although she wasn’t the most impressed by his performance back then, she remembered being shocked by how well he sang when he later debuted in GOT7. Since then, he only got better. Even speaking, his voice was melodic and soft. She liked hearing him say her name.

“Thank you,” he said gently. “So do you.”

“I sing alright,” Jisoo said, scoffing. She bit her bottom lip. “But you… you…”

“Jisoo,” Jinyoung suddenly said. Her stomach did a flip. His tone was different, she could tell that in his mind he had moved on from the subject. Her heart started pounding again. 

“Do you remember a few nights ago when you texted me?”

Oh no. Jisoo tried to make her breathing sound calm.

“Um. It sounds familiar,” she said, twisting a strand of hair nervously.

“I just… I’m not saying it wasn’t a good idea because it was a good one,” Jinyoung said, slowly. Carefully. 

“But… where did that come from?” he asked.

Jisoo sat down on the floor near her bed and pulled her knees up to her chest again. She rested her chin on her knees.

“Nowhere, really,” she said, her voice getting softer. She didn’t want the other girls to hear. She tried to think of a way to divert the conversation. 

“It sort of just came to me. Hey, have you noticed that the weather is getting colder?”

“I have noticed,” jinyoung said. “But wait, so, it really was just a random, spur of the moment thing? I thought it was kind of random when you first brought it up, but it ended up being a genius idea, I just thought that…”

His voice trailed off at the end. Jisoo lifted her head. Every beat of silence that passed between them, she felt her body getting lighter and lighter. She put one hand palm down on the floor to steady herself.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“I just thought it was odd because,” Jinyoung said, pausing often in between his carefully chosen words. “I’d been thinking about that song for a while now. It was in my head, and then you suddenly suggested it, I thought it was like a sign or something that maybe I should… never mind. Anyway, I just called to tell you I thought you did a good job today.”

Jisoo’s ballooning spirit deflated and fell to the floor. There it was again, that same feeling of disappointment that came to her earlier. She sighed.

“Oh,” she said, her voice flat. “Thank you. You did say that already.”

“Yeah.”

More silence. Jisoo fidgeted with a strand of hair again. She could practically hear her heart beating in the thickness of the quiet. She could hear him breathing on the other line. She wished she could hear him thinking, too.

“Is that it, though?” she said. “You just called to say ‘good job’ and ask me where I got my ideas from? It really was just out of nowhere.”

Jinyoung laughed softly.

“You could’ve fooled me the other night though,” he said. “You were so convincing. And that stuff you wrote, it was… it was really honest.”

She heard him swallow and then sigh.

“Actually, for a moment,” he said. “I thought it was real, that you liked a guy. I felt so touched that you were telling me. And then I thought… Ha. Then for a hot second, I thought you meant me. Stupid, right?”

It was Jisoo’s turn to be the quiet one now. She leaned back against her bed, holding the phone to her ear and letting her breaths out slowly and evenly. The only sounds she could make out were the distant squeals of her Blackpink teammates in the common room and Jinyoung existing on the other end of the call.  

“Jisoo? You there?” 

She said, tentatively: “Yeah…”

Jinyoung paused and then said carefully: “You only think of me as a friend, don’t you?” 

His voice was trembling, as was her heart. Jisoo pressed her lips into a thin line once more and thought of what she should do. What should she say?

“Say something,” Jinyoung said, desperation in his voice. “I’m stupid, aren’t I? Thinking like that? Thinking that what you said was real?”

Jisoo closed her eyes and breathed: “Not that stupid.”

Jinyoung was silent.

“Don’t do that,” he said. Jisoo furrowed her brows.

“What?” she said.

“Don’t tease me like that,” Jinyoung’s voice sounded pained. “You must know how much I… You… You always make me…”

He made a sound over the phone that sounded like it could be a laugh or a choke or both. 

“You mess up my feelings so much,” he said. 

Jisoo swallowed, and then, feeling uncharacteristically brave, she answered: “And you mess up mine.”

Suddenly all her nerves were gone. They were replaced with the oddest sensation of lightness. Like if she weren’t holding onto her bed frame, she might float up to the ceiling and then into the air. She wanted to throw her phone against the wall again and then scream, but not out of frustration or anger or humiliation, but out of relief. There, she thought. I’ve said it.

Jinyoung didn’t answer for the longest time. For a minute, she was almost scared that he’d just hung up or her terrible cellphone signal had suddenly cut her off before he could hear what she had said. But she heard him breathing again, on the other end of the line. Say something, she begged in her head.

“Where are you?” he suddenly asked. Jisoo was taken aback.

“What?”

“Are you at home?” he asked. Jisoo looked around, as if to check to make sure that she was at home.

“I… yeah. Why?”

“Can I come see you?” He was breathless.

“What?” Jisoo said, standing up.

“I just… I want to have this conversation in person,” he said, tenderness in his voice. Jisoo’s heart started racing again. Here? Now? As in right now? The girls were only in the other room, how would she—

“Okay,” she said quickly, before she could convince herself otherwise. “I’m at home.”

“I’ll be there soon.” Jinyoung hung up. Jisoo could hear the smile in his voice.

{to be continued}

A/N: I cannot believe I am going to have to turn this into a 4-part story. Sorry, guys, I thought I could wrap this up in 3 chapters, but turns out this idea is a bit bigger than I thought. Oh well. Thank you again for the great response! I'm loving reading your comments and gushing over JinJi with you all. I'm looking forward to more interactions between Jinyoung and Jisoo this Sunday <3