He’s a Flirt

A fanfiction by Bang NaRi

                Jong Kook cringed as he saw you holding his hand. ‘No. Not him.’ He thought. He had been in love with you for ages, but could never overcome the between you. He was already a successful 37 year old singer, with an 18 year old career; What would people say if they found out he had fallen for a girl only slightly older than his career? He would be seen as a ert, crazy or worse. The Korean society was still very strict on celebrity behavior, and the whole situation had the perfect ingredients to give reporters a field day on turning this into one of the biggest scandals of the year.

                He met you when you had just come out of college. After graduating from a  Company Management degree, and facing the reality of not being able to find a job in your area, your uncle talked to some ‘friends’ and got you a job at his friend company, JK Management. His friend accepted you as his trainee. Instead of working for a big company, or starting your own has you had dreamed, you ended up training to be a celebrity manager. You brushed it off as an opportunity. Knowledge and experience never harmed anyone; it would be an extra to your resume.  Jong Kook noticed you on your first day, and for the first time in all of his life, he stopped, stunned by your presence. ‘I fell in love with you at first sight… How cliché of me.’ And that was the start of everything. A year later and he got incredibly close to you, but not in that way. As the big boss of the company, he made sure you were promoted to his own manager’s trainee. This way, he got you to be close to him for most of the day. He could see you before his performances, recordings… You even got a little screen time on ‘Running Man’ with the typical manager dinner scene. For a while, he was happy with that. Just seeing your hard working expression and your joyful smile as you finished a task properly were enough to lighten his day, to make him smile.

                However, that started to change. He noticed that your focus wasn’t 100% on your work anymore. That your phone kept beeping with text notifications. That you received strange calls which made you leave the room, face flushed. The vague gaze at nothing with a silly smile on your face. He noticed you had fell in love. What hurt the most was that you hadn’t fallen for him; you had fallen for someone else. Jong Kook controlled his jealousy and curiosity for as much as he could, but there’s only so much a human can take. For him, it was a few weeks. The breaking point was when you personally asked him if you could take a day off, and refused, politely, to reveal the reason. The only answer he got from you was ‘personal reasons’. It hurt him, that you treated him that coldly. After months of meeting every day, he felt a bond of trust and friendship had formed. Unfortunately, he was proven wrong by that reply.

                Unable to control himself, he followed you that day. Seeing you with another guy made a deep gash in his heart, but he was willing to suffer for your happiness. With the years, he had grown wiser. He learned that it was better for the ones he loved to be with someone who could give them stability, attention, time. Things that weren’t granted when dating a celebrity. It hurt him, but pain is washed away with time. A complex and dreadful process that he had experienced multiple times.

                But after a few days, he felt something was different. His heart felt that something was wrong. And not being capable of ignoring that feeling, he decided to look the reason for it. He knew he was wrong, but standing still didn’t pass as a solution anymore. He had to find out who that guy was, and if he was good enough for you. It was the rightest thing he had ever done in his life. After investigating, and even talking with your friends, he discovered that the guy you were dating, wasn’t very keen on being exclusive. More than two timing you, which was enough to make him face a death sentence in Jong Kook’s point of view, he was multiple timing. He saw a different girl everyday, sometimes even more than once. The anger he felt blinded his reasoning. Without a second thought, he went up to talk to you.

                ‘Ya… ________-ah! That bastard you’re seeing. Don’t you know he’s a flirt!? Why don’t you know? He has so many girls everywhere and every day! Everybody knows it so why don’t you?! That guy, from his head to his toes all he does is lie to you! I care about you, ______… Please, come to your senses! Dump him! He’s no good! Why can’t you see there is someone who truly cares about you? Who really loves you? Who actually only has eyes for you?’

                His outburst made you cry. Tears streamed down your face, and your expression changed from shocked to hurt. You didn’t know what to believe, and why Jong Kook was telling you these things. You grabbed your things and walked away from the office. Every step you took, every inch you grew farther from him, his heart sunk a little more. The next day, his heart left as he read your resignation letter. By trying to do you good, he pushed you away from him. That killed him inside for a while. It affected his whole life. At home, he couldn’t sleep or eat properly. At work, he couldn’t feel what he was singing, unless it was breakup and hurtful songs. All his mind was filled by you, and by the emptiness you left in his life. Every morning he expected you to walk in hurriedly, with his coffee almost burning your hand, trying to balance papers in the other. The lovely scent of perfume you left whenever you were somewhere.

                The people who surrounded him told him to forget about you. That you weren’t worth it. At first, this comment enraged him and made him storm out of wherever he was.  After a while, it just hurt. He tried seeing other people. Pretty girls, y girls, girls that were every guy’s dream. Even his past girlfriend, Yoon Eun Hye, meant nothing to him. She was always his soft spot, but not anymore. The huge sore open wound you left on him made the rest indifferent.

                Months passed, and slowly, things changed. The pain went away, but this time, it was replaced by numbness. He had met the woman of his life, and that small mistake had ruined all. He gave up. He simply gave up on love, on finding his other half, because he knew where it was, and that he could no longer get it. He focused on work, on other things. ‘People can live just fine without love.’ His next love songs weren’t felt, but only some noticed.

                One day, he passed by a park, and saw you. You were crying, as you saw that guy walk away. He noticed the small bump on your belly, and did the math. You probably got pregnant, and dumped after telling him. You were probably more than desperate. You probably thought it was the end for you. You felt pain. Not the same as his, but probably as severe. Jong Kook still loved you with all of his heart, but he couldn’t bring himself to come up to you and comfort you. Part of him still resented, even if it didn’t make sense that you weren’t there for him while he suffered. So he had no obligation to go to you, after you walked away from him.

                But he couldn’t leave it at that. His love for you was still too strong. So he wrote you a letter.

                ‘____________,

                               The other day, while walking by the park, I saw you. I saw you crying as that guy left you. Didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t you listen to me? Did you really have to hit your head so hard against the wall to see the truth? I warned you, and all you did was walk away on me. I’ve been wanting to write this letter since the day you turned your back on me. I actually wrote, but ended up throwing it in the trash, because I couldn’t bear to hurt you, to make you cry again. All I could write was ‘Do you think you will meet anyone like me ever again? Do you think someone will love you as much as I do? I loved you, to death, and that’s how you leave me? But if you want, I’m here, I’ll take you back even if I never had you in the first place. I love you, just come back.’ But now it’s different. Now I’m numb, I’m not interested in love. I found the perfect girl, and she hurt me like no other. I still resent it. I resent you. Even seeing you, a pregnant _____-ssi being abandoned by the man she was with, part of me wants to take you into my arms and take care of you. But the other part doesn’t think I can do it. And a small one even thinks you don’t deserve it. I don’t really know what I want from writing this letter, I just felt like opening myself to you, like I thought I could do. I just wanted to say this to you.

                               I hope that you can overcome this, and that in some way you can be happy.

                                                                                                                                             Kim Jong Kook’

                The day after writing this letter, Jong Kook walked all the way from the company to the building you lived in. He walked up the stairs to your floor, and when reaching the hallway, he saw you. You looked like a pure mess, with depressed eyes, baggy clothing and an empty presence. You looked like a ghost, a haunting. After you went inside your apartment, he wavered. With the letter in his hands, he stood in front of the door. He hesitated, thoughts racing through his mind. Was he too hard on what he said? Should he say something more? Should he just ring the bell and kiss you after you opened the door? He shook his head, and with that, he also shook the thoughts away. He carefully pushed the letter into the mail box opening in the door. He rang the bell once, and walked away, already walking down the stairs when he heard you open the door.

                Jong Kook mindlessly walked home. It was a gloomy Sunday afternoon. The sky was covered in dark gray clouds, the rain menacing over his head. He felt a drop of water in his face, and cursed himself for not bringing an umbrella. But looking around, he noticed no one else held an umbrella, nor ran from the rain. Looking at his reflection at a shop window, he realized he was crying. For the first time, he was crying not from pain, but from relieve. He felt that a huge weight had been lifted from his heart. After telling you all of his thoughts, he could finally start to let you go. He was free, as he hadn’t been for a long time. But more than that, he was free.

                While meditating on that thought, he reached his house without noticing. As he went up the apartment building, he couldn’t help but smile peacefully, as he missed that feeling. And he smiled like that until he reached his door.  There was an envelope taped to the door.

‘From ___________, to Kim Jong Kook.’

End.