CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Taeyeon's Mile High

"Oh my god, Sica, I love you so, so much."

"Holy , Taengoo. Finally! You finally say something nice to me," Jessica said.

Taeyeon giggled, red-faced on a half bottle of soju, and caressed Jessica's cheek until their faces got so close that their lips were touching. Tussling. Tasting.

Jessica reached under her Lion Heart dress, which wasn't all that hard because it was too freaking short, and tugged down her . ! Taeyeon grabbed Jessica's hands. "Sica, we're, like celebrities. This is like super cute and all, but if we just make out to this degree, it'll be way too mediocre."

"What do you propose then, Greatest Leader in the Universe?"

"We earn enough money to pay for our families and their families and their grand families. Let's use some of it."

Jessica kissed her on the lips.

Taeyeon pulled out her phone. Usually, Keunsuk did everything, but he'd stop her on this. Bleed her ears out with advice or admonishment or whatever it was that SM managers were trained to do. The story of her life! She'd have to make the call herself.

"Hi, I'd like to buy two first-class tickets that depart within the hour to anywhere.

"Oh, yes, I'm Girls' Generation's Taeyeon. If you know what I mean, I might just give you a signed copy of Lion Heart, but not my chapstick.

"Yes, Hawaii sounds like a party. Thank you so much! Hugs and kisses. Please show Girls' Generation lots of love!"

Jessica smacked her over the head when she hung up the phone. "Hugs and kisses? Who the are you to be giving hugs and kisses to someone else, Kim Taeyeon?"

The Greatest Leader in the Universe fell to her knees. "I'm sorry, Your Highness-ness. Please forgive your humble servant."

"Only if you pack my luggage and kiss me ten times before we reach the airport. And you have to drive."

Taeyeon felt her cheeks heat up and downed the rest of her soju. "I'm drunk though!"

"Okay. No drunk driving. I'll make Krys do it."

"Oh, how I wish Hayeon lived in Seoul. My little sister. She probably has her driving license by now."

"Probably? What do you mean 'Probably'? You don't know?"

"I don't."

"Be as good of an unnie as me or I'll never marry you."

"Wait. I'll try." Taeyeon gave her cutest ugly eye smile. "Anything for you."

In getting first-class seats, Taeyeon was a certified genius, because first class seats weren't seats but freaking expansive suites. Beds and private bathrooms. Ice buckets of wine and champagne. The stewardess' eyes popped out at the sight of them, or rather, she didn't, because this wasn't a Korean airline, obviously.... Taeyeon was a quick thinker and made the deliberate choice to avoid Asiana and Korean Air. So, as soon as they passed through the boarding gate, Taeyeon and Jessica were comfortably anonymous. 

The plane took off, and they set up the exquisite queen-sized bed, with its quality springs and stark white sheets. Then it was an appropriate time to join the mile-high club.

They landed in Hawaii after seventeen hours of Nation Girl Group levels of awesomeness that would make Yuri proud. Taeyeon chuckled at her excellent pun.

", this is a hella romantic island," Jessica said as soon as they got off the plane.

Palm trees were swaying with the wind. Volcanoes spewing in the distance. Flamingoes flying under the orange sunset.

Sunny caught everything on camera. 

Not everything, because she'd been asleep the first minute. But she'd woken up at Taeyeon's exclamations with half a mind to strangle her friend when she realized that Taeyeon was having an amazing dream. So she yanked her phone out, ripping out the wall charger, and pulled up her video camera el pronto.

She didn't post the video on the group chat because Taeyeon and Jessica had only just restarted. Something like this could crankle something so brittle. She'd hold out until the two were disgustingly in love.

But Sunny could put her life's earnings on the line to bet that the two would reach total annihilation. They just had to. Look at this mega-freaking-bazooka dream hiding in Kim Taeyeon's subconscious.

"Okay, let's do this. Get number one," Sooyoung said.

Joohyun stuck her hand out in the middle of their circle and her seven unnies followed suit.

"Right now, it's Girls' Generation!"

Taeyeon fit her earpiece in, hoping as always that the sound quality would be good. Music Bank had a grudge against her ever since that CNBlue incident, but since they were starting on a Saturday, it was MuCore, so she had a better chance of dealing with audio technicians that weren't snobby about working with idols.

Let's go. We're the best group, she thought to herself as she followed the others out of the room. In the corridor, there was a VJ holding a camera with a blinking green light. She smiled vaguely in its direction, then remembered that they had to get first place fast. She waved at the camera. Thought the Sones who would watch this, and flashed a real smile.

Jessica had left for California a few hours ago. If she were being really honest with herself, she was disappointed that Jessica wouldn't be watching them perform live. But that was okay. She just had to make sure that this would be worth rewatching later.

"Leggo, leggo!" Yuri said.

"Leggo," Yoona echoed.

They waited for the group ahead of them to clear the stage before going on. There was a group of Sones in the crowd. They cheered loudly. Made it sound like there were a lot more Sones than there actually were. Taeyeon wasn't fazed. If they did well, the fans would come.

It was easy to say, but harder to execute. They really wanted to do well and had practiced like crazy. But art never gets finished, and Soshi songs were too commercial to be real art, right? Lion Heart was a nice Soshi song, but not by itself awesome music. Then again, Taeyeon never loved any of their title tracks. Stop thinking about useless things and give the best stage. We're number one.

She filtered her thoughts. Emptied her mind. Focused on the first note. Instinctively ran through the whole song in half a minute. The lights dimmed to a single spotlight, her members surrounding her, the MR in her earpiece was good enough.

After the performance, they went to the company to wash up and change into practice clothes. Time for review. Every first performance for the three big broadcast shows had to have one. They talked for fifteen minutes.

"I think we can vary the dances a bit," Taeyeon said to Hyoyeon, "but it might be better to save the big changes towards the end of our run."

"Yeah, we definitely should," Sunny said. "It's not going to be special if we do it too soon."

Everyone else concurred. Joohyun set up the iPad against the mirror to record the practice. They ran through it three times before calling it a day. These things were never long, just necessary.

Her members looked as exhausted as Taeyeon felt. She wanted to tell them to sleep early, but it seemed a little lame. "Have a good night, everybody."

"Whoa," Yuri said. "Taeng said good night first. Someone's desperate for a peaceful sleep tonight. I wonder why?"

"Ooh," Yoona said. "Could it possible be because unnie is a thousands of miles from a certain person?"

"Or maybe, she's looking forward to her dreams tonight," Sunny said.

The girls squealed. "What did she say in her sleep?"

"If it's rated, I don't want to hear it," Joohyun said. She shot a look at Taeyeon as if she'd been violated. Taeyeon honestly wished she'd taken Sunny's declaration to post her relationship news on the group chat more seriously. Now she'd have to bury six other ruffians.

Sunny laughed. "Chill. Nah, there was a magnificent dream, but let's just say that it's only safe to share once they're inseperable at the waist."

The girls whooted. Taeyeon felt her cheeks heat up and covered her face. She didn't want to know what she'd dreamt about. "Let's just go home. It's late."

Talking about missing Jessica made Taeyeon miss her even more. When they got back to the dorm, she went to the balcony and made a video call, then she remembered that Jessica was in mid-flight. Even after Jessica reached San Jose, she still had a two hour cab ride South to her destination in Tres Pinos.

So Taeyeon waited for two days, after Inkigayo and then twenty-four more hours of teasing, before she returned to the balcony.

"Ya," she said, as soon as the call went through. "What are you doing now?"

"Hey, you." Jessica angled the camera so that Taeyeon could catch a glimpse of the poolside. "Reading this magazine.... drinking a mimosa... chilling in general. What's up?"

"Just wanted to talk to you."

Jessica broke into a huge smile. "What about you? What are you doing up at this hour?"

"Waiting for you to come back?"

"Ha! What's gotten into you today? Did something good happen?"

"Nothing special," Taeyeon replied. "Are you still jetlagged?"

"Nope," Jessica said. She on the straw of her orange mimosa. "So, did you talk to the others about the lawsuit?"

"Not yet. I'll wait until we've settled into promotions before telling them," Taeyeon said. Then, because she didn't want to talk about this anymore, she said, "So we filmed for a reality show today. We celebrated Fany's birthday at the end. The crew was really sweet. At first, we just thought that it was going to be our individual video messages, and it was, but they had fake snow like it was winter. It was cool."

Jessica nodded. "That sounds nice. I wish I was there."

"Yeah..." A small silence sprouted between them and started expanding like a balloon. "Well, when you come back, all of us are gonna space out a block in our schedules and have a night off together."

Jessica just smiled.

Taeyeon was going to ask if she'd listened to the Lion Heart album, but it suddenly seemed like an insensitive question. There weren't many other things on Taeyeon's mind other than Girls' Generation. Other than... "I did coloring today," Yuri drew little insects all over my candy cane, and uh, I can just imagine that you would've loved to mess things up with her, "and finished one more page in my book."

"Pics, please." 

"Okay, tomorrow."

"And a selfie."

"Ugh."

"I'll send you two if you send me one."

"Okay."

Jessica gave a satisfied nod. "Seriously, though. Talk to the others before you get the company involved, okay?"

Taeyeon heaved a big sigh and rolled her eyes. "Aish. Are we back on this topic?"

"Yeah. Your happiness is important."

"I'm happy enough as it is now," Taeyeon said. "You should stick with the friends and family argument."

"Take the first plane out. I want to smack you over the head. Isn't the whole reason you started singing because it made you happy? Your happiness is clearly important to you."

"If you're gonna be like that, then it's like, why did I want to be happy in the first place, right."

"Because of your cousin..."

"Yeah, so my happiness is not my own or whatever, and let's just not talk about this," Taeyeon said. "I promise I'll talk to the others later. When we get first place. If we don't, then there's really no point."

"...Okay." Jessica looked like she was torn between wanting to apologize and being exasperated.

Either way, Taeyeon didn't want to talk about anything. It was really lame, this traumatized at childhood when nothing bad had happened to herself. It was more than ten years ago already, so she wasn't affected by it anymore. Besides, her life wasn't just about herself anymore. She had a 'we' and she needed all of them and that was all that mattered. She was already doing her best, as it is. She hadn't thought about this in a long time. It felt too intense. She shoved it to the back of her mind and focused on Jessica on the screen before it could pop out of the woodwork and bother her for another decade. "What are you going to do later?"'

"The conference starts after lunch. I'll be busy after that."

"Cool. Well, I'm tired. Have a good day, okay?"

"Alright. Good night. Sleep well!"

Taeyeon put down the phone. Sunny was already asleep. She quietly found her PJs in the dark and tiptoed out to the bathroom. She lowered the volume on her phone and played soft music as she washed up. She had a strangely uncomfortable feeling at the bottom of her stomach. She hadn't felt as good talking to Jessica as she had anticipated. She was exhausted, but she didn't feel like sleeping. She sat at the dining table and played games on her phone until the dark room got brighter.

She took out the samgyetang the housekeeper had left in the fridge the day before and heated it up in the microwave. It was an awesome breakfast. Her phone screen lit up with a new message.

[Jessica]
[Received 05:22]
hey, hope u had a good sleep! today will be awesome! the conference was ok, but wish u were here to amuse me. haha.
and, sorry about yesterday. hope u didn't think about it much:/ 
[Sent 05:25]
It's ok=X
[Received 05:26]
omg kty dont tell me u haven't slept yet ><
[Sent 05:27]
No, I did. I just woke up early to pee.
[Received 05:28]
liar>< go sleep!
[Sent 05:28]
Ok, ok. Enjoy your dinner!

She drained the bowl of samgyetang. The air in the dining room completely still. And she was finally sleepy. She went back to the bedroom and crawled into bed, her headache instantly lifting. Damn it. I have to wake up in two hours. She should have slept instead of being all emo like a teenager. As luck would have it, she had to be first to the salon later. Damn it...

A/N: 'Fast' update because of slow update~ Thanks for the comments/upvotes last chapter! Let me know how this one was!