❝ chapter one

s o l a r ’ s

Five weeks post-Eric was harder than I expected it to be. True to his words, he contacted me a few times, a few texts and that was it. He was busy, flew in back and forth. We both knew how busy we would be - him working on his songs and me on our promotion. We both knew things would never be as good as they were after it ended. The last text would be the last reply either from me or from him, sometimes left unanswered and we would started on another one a week later. The last text was exactly two weeks ago. 

My finger lingers over the message app then swiftly over the browser. It becomes more of a habit to check his schedules or where he is right now. He might be overseas again or maybe he just doesn’t want to talk like after our last shooting together. He would still texted later to apologize for not replying though, sometimes because he’s busy and that one time because he’s fed up with the election result back in America then another time, he’s in America with his family and sometimes, just maybe, maybe he doesn’t see the point in talking with me at all. 

I was asked how I felt for every interview we had, and as much as I wanted to tell them it was hard and I couldn’t feel anything except the emptiness and our parting was more than just bittersweet because somehow along the path, it was real to me but that would killed everyone else and not just myself. My members deserved better than me blabbering my actual feelings when it was crystal clear that some of our fans did not really enjoy the idea of us together in the show. 

The last interview went smoothly or so I hoped and even though I was able to flaunt my answer that it was bittersweet, that I felt refreshed and sad when I was asked about him, my members were still not taking it at all. Byul and Wheein were still mad at the repetitive question and I know they’re behaving this way because they knew how I actually felt about this whole thing and they knew better than anyone else that lying repetitively did not do me any good. Hyejin didn’t complain as much about the question but she was pissed and she showed it. The host took the signs, so he stopped because my members weren’t exactly the type to hide their facial expressions when the questions asked were asked to caused uproars.  

    “How many days have it been now? Has he even call or text at all?” 

I shrugged. The last time I checked, the text was left unanswered by him and I didn’t want to come across as the clingy type, bugging for his attention. He probably had enough to dealt with. Composing wasn’t entirely easy, he needed spaces and I’m trying to be as patient as I could be. And, there were news about him and his company, he’s probably stressed out enough. 

    “He was the one who clearly said to call or text him if you ever feel lonely and now he’s the one who’s not replying for several weeks. What is he playing at? Was it all just for a show?” Byul frowns, pulling her tie apart and tosses it aside. 

They eventually dropped the conversation when I called for another practice before we leave for another schedule. We were invited to perform at the Blue Dragon Film awards and I was glad the members were back in their usual mood when I mentioned the ad-libs we planned last night. We knew it’d be very tough to get the performance exciting, usually film award shows were known to be quite serious and it’d be a place where most idols found extremely difficult to perform because they rarely gave away their reactions. So, our company decided if we added their famous lines from their works into our songs, it’d at least help hype the atmosphere a little bit. Hastily, I grabbed my phone and fired up another text.

This would be the last text, or at least I hope not.