chapter 5

“I told you that you were special, didn’t I? I’ll be straightforward with you. I like you.”

Sunggyu set the bowl down firmly and looked her straight in the eyes, searching for something, anything that could tell him that she was no longer the same girl who had confessed to him on a variety show two years earlier.

She was telling the truth, at least from what she believed. She had to be. From the start, there had been an unspoken sort of agreement that they wouldn’t let lies complicate whatever they had between them. There were already enough of those in their careers. The dating scandal had only been the tip of the iceberg of what really happened in the entertainment industry, and the two of them were both the type to keep their personal matters far out of the reach of hungry producers who were willing to sell anything for ratings.

Two years ago, in the backseat of the Running Man car, her tone had been casual, her face bright and prepped for the cameras. Now, under the harsh kitchen lights, her dark eye circles overtook her pale skin; without the BB cream to smooth out her complexion, the sallow hue of her cheeks matched the way her lips were set in a grim line. Her gaze spoke fear, anticipation, worry, vulnerability –

- and yet, and yet, one calculating look and he could still see it. The imbalance that had caught his eyes the first time, that had puzzled him to no end, that had forced him to recognize what he had so badly wanted to bury in the dark corners of his memory. His lips moved before he could shut himself up:

“And Howon?”

She froze in place, almost as if time itself had stopped, and in that moment he swore he could see something in her fracture all over again. Something inside him threatened to break too. He wasn’t enough, he’d never been enough, no matter how much she wanted to delude herself.

She loved him. It just wasn’t the him he wanted to hear.

“And Howon?”

She stopped breathing, heartbeat fading out as she looked back at him, at the way his narrowed eyes seemed to be calculating her every thought. She stared right back.

This was not the side of Sunggyu that she had fallen for. No, she was vulnerable to soft, genuine smiles and feathery touches, the kind of warmth that bloomed inside her whenever he spoke. Not the way his gaze hardened and the feeling of guilt stabbed her in the gut, even though she had no idea what she’d done. Exchanges like that, with sarcastic little quips and snarky comments growing into full-blown attacks, were Howon’s style. She’d despised him when he was angry, although she was the other side of the same coin. Too alike. It’d made them the best of friends, but also the worst of enemies.

Before she could collect herself to respond to the man in front of her, however, she saw him look away, the corners of his lips turning down. And for the first time, she noticed – he looked sad, more tired than he’d been when he first walked in through the door. She’d always run to him with her problems, but she was selfish like that, when it came to him. She always made sure consider the people around her, but when it came to him, she’d only taken, never given.

I told you you’d ruin him, the voice in the back of her mind, the one that sounded exactly like Howon, whispered. He’d been right, but she should’ve known, should have seen the signs and agreed to leave Sunggyu alone. Instead, she’d denied, clung to the delusion that he could fix her and he’d come out unscathed. It was stupid of her to think that he could. Hurt people hurt people, simple as that.

“If you joke around with things like that, people might take you seriously,” he told her, with a small, exhausted smile on his face, like he had travelled to hell and back and knew secrets she’d only discover once she was there for good.

She had nothing to say to that. He had to know she hadn’t been joking; there was no way to construe her words as anything other than a confession. But if he was going to choose to ignore it, what choice did she have other than to play along?

Her cell phone pinged twice on the tabletop and she knew, without having to look, that it was her manager coming to pick her up. She watched his eyes dart to her phone screen, before he stood up across from her. “Time to go, Eunji-ah.”

The next few minutes of gathering her things passed in silence. Right when she stepped out into the hallway, though, she turned back to say one last thing. In the doorway, his frame seemed small as he hunched forward with fatigue. “See you,” she murmured, and he summoned a smile to his face and nodded, as if they were two lovers parting ways, just as the rest of the world would believe. But rather than the fresh memory of what had just happened being a sweet recollection, it left a bitter taste in that she wanted nothing more than to erase.

As soon as she set off down the hall, she hear his door click firmly in place, and she wished she could lock the night’s events away in her mind in the same way. But standing in the elevator and watching the floor numbers change, the picture of him with a certain kind of weariness etched into his features suddenly surfaced, and she couldn’t help but think to herself it was like staring into her own mirrored reflection.

Dongwoo returned to the apartment mid-afternoon, looking much more alive than he did. “Is anything good on?” he asked, gesturing to the screen of the television. Sunggyu had turned it on to drown out the silence. Habits remained habits.

“No,” he replied,  finding the remote and turning the monitor off, although he didn’t know the answer to Dongwoo’s question – he had no idea what he’d been watching in the first place. Bright colors were only a good distraction when he’d cleared out his thoughts enough to pay at least some attention. “Food’s in the fridge, by the way.”

“We have food now?” At this, the dancer perked up and strolled over to the kitchen. Sunggyu heard the sound of the fridge opening, followed by a whoop of glee. “Homemade food? Who came over?”

“Eunji.” Sunggyu stared up at the ceiling, hoping wouldn’t question any further. The low buzz of the microwave came on as he closed