PART II

x. Egoist

“Actually, I’m scared

Don’t hate me for this

But then again, I hope for love again

Once again, love."

 

JESSICA

“Jessica.”

 

A knock draws her attention to the doorway. Jessica slides the mouse pointer across the screen until it finds the red X and with a muted click, the window and its contents disappear from view.

 

Hyoyeon's husky voice floats to her ears a beat after the rhythmic rapping of knuckles against wood subsides.

 

"You know, I'm not complaining but I thought this—you staying in the US—was supposed to be a short-term thing. Your child in Korea's going to get abandonment issues if you don't return soon."

 

Jessica raises an eyebrow at the comment and wordlessly accepts the coffee cup that is offered to her by the other girl.

 

She takes a sip, the warm liquid sliding down the back of .

 

"Hyo, I already fly over for all the essential meetings. As for the rest, I can manage it from here in LA anyway. Honestly, technology is a miracle in the 21st century.”

 

Truth is, she lingered because she wasn't ready to go back yet.

 

Ready for what she doesn't quite know.

 

(Or at least, pretends not to.)

 

Hyoyeon rolls her eyes, before bringing her own beverage to her lips and tilting the cup backwards.

 

"You enjoy my presence, and this co-parenting of Blanc thing anyway."

 

“Technology doesn’t solve everything , Jessi.”

 

“It solves enough.” Jessica says pointedly, setting her cup down, and returning her attention to the computer screen. Her pointer lands on an arbitrary file and she opens the attached report, quite possibly out of obligation as Hyoyeon's gaze remains on her.

 

“Are you actually working right now?"

 

Feigning innocence, Jessica glances up from the monitor, her face impassive and not giving away the fact that she had been reading the same sentence over and over again. The string of letters that had jumbled together without meaning or significance.

 

"...Yes?"

 

"So, you're not looking up articles about that group and the lead singer that you've been obsessed with ever since you came back from Korea then?"

 

A bolt of alarm shoots through Jessica's body and she just manages to stop her eyes from widening too much and giving away her surprise at Hyoyeon's keen observation.

 

"Who?"

 

SNSD.

 

Kim Taeyeon.

 

The stiffness in her shoulders does not go unnoticed by the other girl.

 

"Don't play dumb, Jung." Hyoyeon replies flatly, pursing her lips into a thin line, and calling Jessica’s bluff, "I searched them up. Your sister starred in the lead singer's music video, so I know you know exactly who I'm talking about."

 

Jessica's quiet for a moment. Her heart feels heavy and her mind feels as numb as her tongue.

 

"What about them?"

 

"You're not very sneaky, Jessi. You’ve never been good at being subtle."

 

Hyoyeon strides over to her desk, setting down her coffee cup on its surface and proceeds to take out a folded envelope from her pocket.

 

The envelope is blank, unaddressed and unassuming, but for some reason, its glaringly white presence feels intrusive. An alarm goes off in the back of Jessica’s mind and a feeling of unease crawls under her skin.

 

"What's this, Hyo?"

 

Jessica runs a finger under the flap of the envelope.

 

Her hand trembles slightly.

 

Hyoyeon shrugs, attempting to appear nonchalant—clearly a façade—because Jessica can feel the blonde’s eyes sharply trained on her; acuity as sharp as an eagle's, evidently gauging her every move and every reaction.

 

She pulls her finger out from under the flap and instead tears the envelope open, leaving jagged edges where the paper messily tore. No second thoughts are given to elegance. There's no need for it.

 

Inside the envelope, she finds a logo and four letters in bolded print—the same ones that had headlined the article she'd promptly closed the minute Hyoyeon had knocked on her door—printed neatly upon fancy glossy paper.

 

SNSD concert tickets.

 

Jessica struggles to reconcile her conflicting emotions. She wanted them, but she didn't.

 

They were the very concert tickets that in moments of weakness, she had almost booked; like a piece of the past that she wanted to keep to herself. She had an obligation to support her friends— could she call them her friends anymore?—Jessica reasons, but a part of her knew that wasn't her real reason for wanting to attend. She wanted—like the first time she'd heard Taeyeon sing—to drown in the emotions that only Taeyeon's voice could elicit from her.

 

But at the same time, Jessica wondered if she could stomach the thought of attending their concert, seeing them, and have them look back at her impersonally, just another nameless face in the ocean of countless others—like Jessica didn't exist to them anymore, or more specifically, didn't exist to Taeyeon anymore.

 

The twisting pain in her chest had halted her from ever going through with the purchase.

 

Jessica lets the envelope fall to the desk; the tickets themselves held in her grasp. They were not cheap, and Jessica finally notices the VIP logo scribbled into the bottom right corner.

 

Backstage Pass included?

 

What connections did Hyoyeon have to pull to even be able to get her these tickets?

 

The room spins a little as the gravity of the situation sinks in, because when it came down to it, her decisions always seemed to be made for her and the glossy paper crinkles between Jessica’s fingers.

 

"Consider it a birthday present or Christmas present or present for whatever occasion you see fit."

 

"Hyo, I can't."

 

Jessica's voice crumbles, making no effort to hide the gradual disintegration of her resolve.

 

"Jessi..."

 

"I just can't." Jessica weakly protests again, then in an even smaller voice she adds, "You know why..."

 

Hyoyeon crosses her arms.

 

"Despite what you claim, you want to see them—see her—just admit it." The blonde’s tone is pressingly hard and she leaves no room for argument, refusing to let Jessica brush it off this time.

 

The words lodge themselves in Jessica's chest like ugly pieces of the truth, ripping through her doubts and uncertainties, exposing her hidden thoughts.

 

Jessica drops her gaze to the envelope in her trembling hands.

 

"I almost hate you for figuring it—figuring me—all out."

 

Hyoyeon smiles wistfully. It was a victory—she didn't need to gloat; Jessica’s admission would suffice.

 

"Didn't I tell you that you should just tell me? Because you know I'll figure it out eventually, Jessi."

 

"I didn't know what to say."

 

"Maybe start with: hello, I'm in love but I ran away because I'm scared. "

 

Jessica bites her lower lip.

 

"I didn't run away."

 

She thinks of the way she’d flown to Seoul, desperate to see Taeyeon again, only to be rebuffed and sent stumbling back, her heart shattered into millions of pieces.

 

"You're doing it right now." Hyoyeon says, alluding to her refusal to accept the gift.

 

"She doesn't want to see me."

 

"What happened between the two of you?"

 

"We kissed..." Jessica turns away, red creeping up her cheeks, and as she continues, a wave of embarrassment accompanies the next few words. "Then I-I avoided her."

 

A snort escapes Hyoyeon's mouth, and soon it morphs into a fully-fledged belly splitting kind of laughter from the blonde. The contagious nature of the sound would've made Jessica laugh along had she not been on the receiving end.

 

"Stop laughing!"

 

Hyoyeon exaggeratedly mimes wiping tears from her eyes.

 

"So, this is your complication? Sounds pretty simple to me!—Well minus the part about you having a boyfriend and said boyfriend proposing...wait, why doesn't she want to see you?"

 

Jessica blinks, frowning.

 

Why didn't Taeyeon want to see her?

 

“She needed time…”

 

“How much? It's been months. Now I know why you're reluctant to return...you've been here waiting...Are all these months you’ve given her still not enough?” Hyoyeon questions with a slight tilt of her head.

 

"I don't know..."

 

Uncertainty floods Jessica’s voice, imbuing it with a trembling that is reflecting in the quivering of her heart. Just maybe, Hyoyeon was right, and the suggestion plants a seed of hope in her mind.

 

"You're both idiots!” Hyoyeon sighs exasperatedly, shaking her head wildly and throwing her hands up as if she could not comprehend how the situation had devolved into this long drawn out silence. “Idiots that need to talk and confess your undying love to each other."

 

Jessica didn’t blame her. She barely understood how they had gotten into this situation, but now, the knots were finally untangling, and all Jessica could to do was to follow the threads.

 

(She prays that the ends of the threads were not frayed.)

/

Moving on was impossible. Not when everything in the universe seemed to hinder it, preferring to draw them into a collision course, time and time again.

 

Jessica had waited, slipping through days filled with the mindless clatter of keys, furious scribbles of designs and countless business meetings. The days had been like the in-and-out of the tides, monotonous, yet filled with enough variations to keep her mind occupied, distracting her from the way time trekked towards a certain destination, pulling Jessica and Taeyeon, closer and closer together.

 

Except the two of them had never been good with their timing, too early, too late, too out of synch and caught off guard, constantly missing each other by the span of a heartbeat.

 

Taeyeon was hours early in her arrival, and Jessica, hours late in her mental preparation for their meeting.

 

She had mistakenly thought there was still time to think and the answers to the questions that ran like a constant stream through her mind could wait.

 

(Should she be impersonally polite as any fan should? Should she be content with an autograph and handshake only? Should she greet them as friends? as acquaintances? as strangers?)

 

But everything just vaporises from Jessica’s mind the instant her eyes land upon the unmistakeable form of Taeyeon who had her back to Jessica, long hair falling straight down past her shoulders.

 

Jessica’s stomach plunges, leaving her feeling as though she was freefalling, and even though she’d expected to feel like this—like she was being pulled under by a strong current and overwhelmed—she was unprepared, stranded without the safety net that carefully thought out responses could offer.

 

The collision course had been reset again.

 

Something instinctual drives her to close the remaining distance between them, slipping into the line behind the girl.

 

"Taeyeon?"

 

Jessica’s mouth opens and the name falls from her lips, warm and gentle, swathed with a familiarity of sorts that wakes a dull ache deep within her chest.

 

The raven-haired girl turns around slowly, and to Jessica, it appears in slow motion; a drawing out of the moment and a suspension of time, mirroring that of the disbelief she knew they’d both felt.

 

"Sica?" The figure reflexively answers, before swallowing thickly and taking a deep breath, shoulders lifting and lowering.

 

Taeyeon corrects herself after a heartbeat.

 

“Jessica.”

 

The ghost of the question, just like the nickname she had inadvertently used disappears, and the shock in Taeyeon’s eyes gives way to a wary apprehension, settling like silt in their depths.

 

A dead silence, the kind that had clung to them over the past few months returns in full force, undiluted by physical distance. It was as though the months of silence had somehow concentrated themselves into this point in time—compacted so densely that it almost felt like a tangible entity.

 

They were trapped on opposite sides of a glass partition, separated and only allowed to look. Taeyeon was still inexplicably out of reach, even though they were now standing face to face and almost close enough to touch.

 

It's a situation that Jessica hates.

 

"Hi."

 

It’s barely a tap on the glass, murmured so quietly that Jessica doesn’t know if Taeyeon will even hear her.

 

Taeyeon does.

 

"Hi?"

 

“Yeah, isn’t that how people greet each other?”

 

Taeyeon makes a move to respond, her eyebrows drawing together and lips parting slightly, but before she does, someone clears their throat behind them. Caught up in their own world of guarded hellos and painful goodbyes, they hadn’t noticed that they’d already reached the front of the queue.

 

The barista behind the counter makes a clicking noise with his tongue, impatient, and wholly ignorant of the significance of the moment he had just carelessly interrupted. He, like the world around them, was restless and ready to move on.

 

But the two of them weren't.

 

"Excuse me ladies, are you going to order? If so you should hurry up a bit—I mean, you’re welcome to take your time when it’s not so busy..."

 

He gestures to the growing line of customers behind them.

 

Taeyeon’s seems flustered, caught off guard and the way Taeyeon’s eyes hastily dart to the indecipherable scribbles of English on the blackboard, alerts Jessica to Taeyeon’s predicament.

 

“Tae?” Jessica whispers softly. "What do you want?"

 

Taeyeon turns towards Jessica and brown eyes land on her own.

 

You.

 

Realising her words could easily be misconstrued—the way she herself had for a fraction of a heartbeat—Jessica stumbles and tacks on the remainder of the sentence. "...to drink, I mean.”

 

Her Korean should feel out of place, after all, the rounded syllables were too foreign in this land, but in Taeyeon’s presence, they would always fit, no matter what the world around them thought.

 

Taeyeon softens slightly, a layer of the walls erected to keep Jessica out is taken down and her eyes lose a shade of their guarded quality—just enough for the turmoil swirling in them to be evident.

 

“You don’t have to.” Taeyeon mumbles.

 

“I don’t, but just let me—please?”

 

The action is purely instinctive and Jessica doesn't even realise it until it was too late to backtrack—her hand already on Taeyeon’s arm, tucked into the crook of her elbow and fingers pressing gently into the soft fabric of a sleeve.

 

Jessica expects Taeyeon to freeze at the touch but the dark-haired girl doesn't. Taeyeon crumbles—resolve faltering. Tiny cracks trek along the glass that figuratively kept them apart, running along a network of fault lines and manifesting in a spider webbing of weakness.

 

Fluent English rolls off Jessica's tongue, relaying their orders to the barista.

 

As they wait—Taeyeon's attention preoccupied with something on her phone—Jessica tries not to think too much about the way Taeyeon had leaned into her, voice low and soft, her drink of choice slipping off her tongue and into Jessica’s ear. Jessica's heart had spluttered, tripping and stumbling into an erratic rhythm.

 

Her eyes land on the girl beside her, taking in the strands of hair that had escaped from where they had been, tucked behind Taeyeon's ear. Jessica doesn’t fight the memory that surfaces, materialising with its sharp details and visceral emotions.

 

Taeyeon in Sunny's cafe.

 

Taeyeon's curious gaze and implicit trust.

 

The same drink in a different time.

 

"Let me choose your order for you?"

 

Jessica feels a tightness building in her chest, holding her heart hostage with chains she had unwittingly handed over.

/

The steaming beverages sit idle on the table between them; contents hot enough to burn their tongues.

 

“How is everyone…?”

 

Jessica begins hesitantly, biting her lip after the words were out. She knows she was pushing the boundaries of their tentative relationship; one that was fragile—glued together only by their past association and the last 5 minutes of venting, in which they had traded offhand remarks about the barista’s impatience.

 

“If you really wanted to know why don’t you just ask them directly?”

 

Jessica flinches.

 

(The glass between them was still intact.)

 

The brunette sighs and proceeds to runs her finger along the table top, drawing out aimless lines that slowly begin to take the shape of letters and of words, spelling out all the questions she wanted to, but couldn’t ask.

 

She curls her fingers into a loose fist.

 

“You need to work on your English. I might not be there next time.” Jessica says lightly, trying to cut away at the tension that clung to them.

 

“Shut up, not all of us studied abroad.” The words are clearly enunciated in English. “Actually, I also happen to know you and bull so I think I'll be fine with or without you Jessica.”

 

Jessica flinches, taken back by the underlying animosity in Taeyeon’s voice. She can’t help think of the countless times they had conversed over coffee, tucked away in a corner of Sunny's cafe.

 

She finds that she really missed them—now more than ever.

 

Jessica wonders if this was the final memory in their collection, shoved aside and put on indefinite hiatus, shelved along with what was once, friendship.

 

Where had it all gone wrong?

 

“You don’t have to pretend to like me.” Jessica says, breaking the lull in their conversation.

 

“I’m not pretending anything, Jessica.”

 

“Then can we talk?”

 

“Aren’t we doing that already?”

 

“You know what I mean Taeyeon—about us .”

 

The idol swipes her coffee cup off the table, making a move to get up out of her seat.

 

“There’s nothing to say.”

 

“Taeyeon…”

 

Jessica was familiar with running, she had done it all her life, and now, it was ironic that the tables were turned…it wasn’t much fun being on the receiving end—being the one left behind.

 

“I have a show to prepare for tonight.”

 

“I know.” The brunette whispers, admitting that she’d kept up with SNSD’s promotional activities. "I-I really liked Rain... it's not fair that they axed your Deluxe album promotions. I would've like to hear you perform." That Jessica still kept up with Taeyeon's life.

 

The unexpected admission is enough to root Taeyeon in place, intense eyes locking onto Jessica's. It was as though Taeyeon was searching for something within their depths, maybe it was a reason to stay, or maybe it was for evidence that Jessica words were a lie.

 

"I broke up with Donghae."

 

There's hitch in Taeyeon's breathing, but maybe Jessica had imagined it because the reply she receives a second after is unbelievably cold and indifferent.

 

"You’re telling me this because…?"

 

Because I love you Taeyeon.

 

Jessica wants to say those words, but on the way out, they lodge themselves in , and she pauses, suddenly feeling stupid. It’s not how she wants Taeyeon to hear it from her and Jessica swallows the words down—just like she tries to do with the tears that now pricked at the corners of her eyes, warm and insistent.

 

“…Why are you pushing me away, Taeyeon?”

 

She squeezes her eyes shut, refusing to let Taeyeon see her wet lashes or the way her eyes glistened, and vision blurry.

 

Taeyeon makes a pained noise that see