I’m going to Vancouver with my mom as a break. Don’t miss me.

      I left the identical message for both Junsu and Yoochun on a yellow sticky note: Junsu’s on his favorite soccer ball and Yoochun’s on his favorite purple tie. I was certain they would be fine without me as I pictured Junsu bellowing his dolphin-like squawks as soon as he read my message, then calling Yoochun to snort over how lame my trip sounded.

      As the plane hit the verdant grounds of Vancouver, Canada, I remembered Yoochun’s call prior to departure.

      “You’ve got the entire world worth of girls chasing on your tail, yet you choose to spend your precious time-off traveling with your mother?”

      The point is to avoid the entire damn world. I thought in anger.

      Out loud, I told him gruffly, “At least I know she’ll be carrying an extra blanket for me instead of trying to me in my sleep.” Then I hung up on him rudely, not in the mood to ride with his adrenaline high from filming and hearing about the rocketing episode receptions. I didn’t know about Yoochun and Junsu, but for all I knew, I was practically a vermin to the world - half of the world who had once loved TVXQ as a whole, anyway. Everyone more or less wanted to claw me apart.

      After retrieving our luggage from the pick-up location, I started noticing an unspeakable shadiness about the airport as I shuffled towards the exit with the crowd. As we passed the customs, there was a muffled yet distinct roar coming from the external waiting hall and even the receiving crowd seemed larger than usual.

      I tugged up the collar of my jacket reflexively, slipped on my aviators and kept my head down low. All just in case.

      Corresponding to my suspicions, there was an enormous crowd of girls on their tip-toes as they stretched their necks to examine each passing traveler. I ducked my head lower and discreetly followed my mom, who was in the lead. In retrospection, it was all pointless hiding considering I was a head taller than her.

      I thought I had passed the group successfully and told my mom in Korean to check on the cab driver.

      That was when it happened—the instant I let my guards down, my voice instantly caught a nearby girl’s attention. Immediately, her head snapped around in a full circle, her eyes staring at me with hysterical excitement. A shrill scream shot from her lips like a bullet at a marathon, igniting the start for all runners to launch into motion—

      “It’s HERO JAEJOONG!”

      A string of shrieks and rumbling footsteps follow, and I immediately grab my mom’s wrist and bolt for the nearest exit, where my reserved taxi was luckily already waiting. As we dashed for our lives, I cursed myself for having ignored and even mocked Junsu’s advice to bring a bodyguard.

      Through a blurry of movements, we somehow managed to head-dive into the car intact.

      “Drive, drive please.” I hiss in rudimentary English as the rampant fans pounded on the car window and jiggled the handle. The driver glanced at me from the rearview mirror in horror, probably regretting having me as a client.

      “Now. Please.” I begged.

      Without another word, he lit the ignition and slammed down on the acceleration pedal. The abrupt motion sent me flying backward and we were zooming out of sight before I could blink twice. Even so, it wasn’t fast enough. The shrieks and screeches of my name that I’d grown used to hearing all these years sounded especially piercing in my ears even from a distance.

      Penetrating, wild, and loud.

 

      “Well then, I see my son is still quite popular no matter where he goes,” my mom patted my hand gently as we cruised along the country highway. She looked over at me, the corner of her eyes wrinkling with genuine love, “I’m proud of you, son.”

      I arranged my expressions into the best fake smile I could muster. After all, what could you say to a mother who truly loved you purely and unconditionally? All she ever wanted was happiness for me, so I couldn’t possibly confide in her about my crumbling career and bleak future prospects.

      “Though I have to say, I was a little concerned about today’s pandemonium,” she furrowed her thin brows. “Is it always like this for you?”

      I shook my head and assured her that we were usually well-protected, and today’s incident had caught me off guard. She nodded and tries to dig deeper into my work life before I divert her attention with questions about our trip plans.

      “Since we finally have a good week, I thought we’d pay a visit to my best friend—Aunt Sung.”

      I raise an eyebrow at her, and she explained slowly, “Don’t you remember her? She used to always bring over the home-made kimchi you loved, and you’d always ask me to cook the same but I couldn’t.”

      “Really.”

      “What about their daughter that you went to high school with?”

      I stared back at her blankly and she suppressed a long sigh. Truth to be told, it wasn’t that I saw no importance in these silly childhood details, it was just that I’d been locked away from real life for so long, that reconnecting to my life again almost felt surreal.

      “She competed with you for the same music scholarship in high school.” I kept the same dazed stare and she finally gave up, “You’ll remember once you see her again.”

      Somewhere between my mother’s explanation of our schedules and plans, I lost my train of thought as I gazed out to the lush foliage outside the window. The ironic thing was, I’d decided to take my time off to explore this far away, foreign to abandon the chaos back in Asia. It seemed, though, that silence is incapable of drowning out my own thoughts. Even with the rugged, snow-capped mountains in the distance and the endless stretch of emerald conifers, I could think of nothing except for the ugly headlines, the accusations and the banishment back at home. I could run, but I couldn’t stop the wounds to stop festering.

      As we swerved into the meandering roads buried deep in the forest, I felt a deep and overwhelming sense of loneliness in the face of nature. I wondered if Yoochun and Junsu felt the same concrete solitude when we were apart. Perhaps, avoiding the negative spiral was the reason they occupied themselves chasing skirts and bedding girls.

      “We are here.”

      We arrived at our designated cottage faster than I expected. Across a field of plush lawn, a cream-colored bungalow stood amidst a patch of newly sprung flowers. A thick forest of red cedar shaded over the tiny house with the cheerful chirps of exotic birds echoing over the silver skies. The fertile black soil sank under my soles as I retrieved our luggage from the taxi trunk. All around came the luscious scent of evergreens and rich oxygen. I took a deep breath and felt my shoulders sag – this was it, my home for the next week.

      “Hana! You’ve finally made time to come and see me!” A woman in her mid-fifties skipped over the flower patch and enveloped my mother in a warm hug. She was sprightly for her age and all smiles. My mother hugged her with equal charisma and smiled back to compliment how young she appeared. I paid the cab driver and stumbled over the simplest English vocabulary as they exchanged inquisitions about the other’s life.

      “My, my, is this Jaejoong?” I flinched at the emphasis of my own name, and as I expected, she was well aware of my celebrity. “You look more handsome those silly appearances on TV.”

      “Really.” My voice sounded colder than I thought, “I didn’t know Canadian TV broadcasted Korean talk shows.” I shot her my most sarcastic grin, “Wow, am I ever famous.”

      My mother glanced at me disapprovingly, yet Aunt Sung took no offense as she answered with unperturbed enthusiasm. “Oh no, no! It’s just that we’ve kept the Korean cable to keep connected to our home country and heritage.”

      Only if the country wasn’t your nemesis and locked you out. I forced myself to swallow the nasty comeback and kept my voice flat. “That’s great.”

      “Jaejoong-ah.”

      “I’m going to... our bags,” I told my mother briefly, ignoring the obvious concern in her tone as I lobbed across the silken lawn. Jet-lagged and fazed by a series of unwelcoming encounters, I was suddenly dreading my long-awaited vacation.

      The door to the bungalow wasn’t locked, and from my mother’s reference, Aunt Sung was an old friend and I made a loud entrance to the house just like my own. As I stepped through the threshold, I expected her other family members to spontaneously appear and launch some more insensitive. Shockingly, though, the house was empty, with the only sounds coming from my own footsteps and the tinkling of piano keyboards.

      The familiar notes reached my ears, and I was frantically searching for the melody around the cavern-like house before I could stop myself. With my own luggage still tightly clutched between my grip, I faltered over my feet as I reached the den: the colossal glass pane reflected the green tint of sprawling foliage, and a tiny shadow sat at the grand piano.

      The pianist lightly tapped on the golden pedals at the base of the ebony piano and her eyes were closed as the delicate sound flowed from the tips of her fingers like a midnight lullaby.

      For a solid moment, I was fixated where I was and gawked at her. She took no notice of my presence and was fully immersed in her music. In that moment, I also forgot where I was as my ears followed with each slope and dip of the tune, entranced. As the song came to a subdued ending, I instinctively clapped as she lifted her hands from the keyboards.

      The thud of my luggage against the wooden floor startled the player, and she sprang from her seat with widened eyes. I knew I should have said something, but the nostalgia was so overwhelming that it had rendered me speechless.

      “Well then, I see there’s no need to reintroduce Rena to you.” Aunt Sung suddenly appeared, placing a hand on my shoulders.

      I raised an eyebrow. “Rena?” When I glanced back at the pianist again, her eyes had absently shifted elsewhere. Under the afternoon glow, her skin was porcelain and her eyes were jewels. I re-examined the grand piano again, and all the faded memory came rushing back like tidal waves.

       

      “Why were you playing that song?”

      “The scholarship’s artist’s choice, remember?”

      “It’s my song—you stole my song! You knew I was going to play it and you took it because you couldn’t come up with anything of your own!”

      “You played it too—the judges from university made a fair choice.”

      “A fair choice?” She scoffed, “Kim Jaejoong, you are despicable—I hope your music scholarship won’t backfire on you someday.”

      She whirled around and left, leaving only a trembling backside for me. In the midsummer night, I felt a chill of guilt run down my spine and the fading elation from receiving the scholarship cheque.

      She never spoke to me again.

      And I became the lead vocal of an Asian superband.