❝ chapter thirty-four

s o l a r ’ s

[blue text = spoken in english]

For our two years anniversary, Eric surprised me with a proposal. Not an actual will you marry me proposal but a proposal to collaborate together for his concert in Atlanta and I thought that’d be a good idea too. Most of our fans in Korea were a lot more accepting when it came to us but the talk of performing together in Korea might still be a hard topic although I had a few groups of people asking me to perform together with Eric someday during our fan signs event. 

This time though, the girls come to Atlanta with us because it’s our break anyway and they want to visit Atlanta too. Compare to the concert, they’re a lot more excited for the pizza that Eric mentioned about. Apparently, it’s one of the Nam’s favorite pizza ever since he was young and Hyejin is really excited to get her hand on one since they’re right across from the concert venue. 

    “I’ll ask Brian to order them for you.” Eric said and the girls refused almost immediately. 

    “No, we can get them ourselves.” Then, after a few minutes, they added. “Actually, it might be a good idea to have your brother comes with us. We might end up spending 3 days just trying to get the order.” 

Just like that, the four of them disappear into the pizza store. Brian is more than willing to go, one, he’s pretty excited for the pizza too and two, he’s really excited about the girls coming along this time. Most of Eric’s fans who wait outside the venue catch us going inside the venue, and they scream, waving their hands frantically and some of them are busy hitting each other. 

Eddie and Eric exchanges knowing smiles and Eric gives him a punch on his arm then rolls his eyes at his younger brother before pulling me inside the venue. What are these two up to again? The last time they did this, Brian was on the street asking for women’s numbers and if they wanted to take a picture with him while both of them laughed their heads off. 

I don’t really have to rehearse much, given that we’re barely dancing for our stage so I come dressed in a short peachy pink dress and my hair curls into my usual wave. We agreed to perform Bruno Mars’s Marry You and changes it into more of an acoustic style. This is supposed to be a surprise performance for his fans but I guess they sort of find out about it a while ago or they might just think that I’m just coming to watch his concert. 

The girls came back exactly an hour later when we’re finished with all of our rehearsal and make up. Brian carried three boxes of pizza while my members carried two each except Byul who held all the beverages. They give both of us a box of pizza, two for themselves, one for both Eddie and Brian and shared the rest with the staffs. 

5 minutes before the show, Eric has to go on standby and he gives me a quick kiss on my lip before he leaves. I blush as his stylists giggle at us and try to act like they haven’t see that at all. My members go outside so they could enjoy the concert and only because this is actually more of a club, they sort of want to have a drinks each too while enjoying the concert. I decide to just stay inside and watch him from the monitor since I’ll be going up on stage soon anyway. 

The second thing I love the most about him would be when he’s performing, he’s always at his best then. He seems at ease and he seems the happiest and there’s nothing better than getting to see that. Especially right now when he’s singing and just interacting with the people who love and support him through every steps. I could totally relate to how that feels like, when you’re a singer and you’re having your own concert, that feels like the world is finally in the right place for once for you. Somehow, the image of thousands of people cheering for you make your heart swells in happiness and to be very honest, even if that would be my last second alive, I’d have no regrets collapsing on that stage. That’s probably the charm of this job. 

    “Solar, it’s your turn to standby.” The stage director pokes his head into the waiting room and smiles. “We’ll be ready for you in 5 minutes.” 

I nod and skip along to the stage. Parts of me are really excited that I’m finally getting to perform with him again and parts of me are shaking in fear. It’s either they like it or they might just hate it. Hopefully, it’s not the latter. They weren’t even notified about this surprise performance and I’m pretty sure there are still some fans who don’t really like seeing us together even after 2 years, this might all go very wrong. 

    “I have a very special guest who will perform with me tonight and I’m probably sure you guys could have guess who it is because you saw us at the entrance a few hours ago.” Eric said in perfect English and suddenly, there’s a loud cheer from the audience that took me by surprise because I had no idea what he was saying at all. “But anyway, I’m going to have the next stage with someone I really love.” 

    He turns his head a little and catch my eyes then he smiles and continues, “She’s an amazing woman, but most of you probably already know that. She was actually freaking out a lot while we were preparing for this because we didn't want to cause any chaos. You guys don't have to worry about me but please scream loudly for her too so she'll be less nervous. I'll be fine, you don't have to scream for me.” 

They laughed at that and so did he and I started to get really curious about what he was saying all along. I heard a lot of she and I knew he was talking about me and times like this really made me wanted to take extra classes for English. 

    “To be very honest, it’s our second anniversary today and this performance is also very special to us because we thought about it for a really long time. We were contemplating whether we should really do this or not because you know, this might go very wrong and we really don’t want to offend anyone but anyway, I hope you enjoy this stage as much as we both enjoyed preparing it for you. Thank you for coming tonight!” 

There were a lot of cheers after that so I guess he said the usual stuffs then the stage went completely dark and I took a deep breath before stepping onto it. This felt even more nervewrecking than my own first solo stage. In front of me sat his fans, his friends, families and everyone who had been in his life during his younger days in here and the thought of doing this with him, it tugged the string in my heart and I could barely held myself back from tearing up. 

Eric smiled at me and grabbed my hand then quickly gave me a peck on my cheek and whispered that everything would be fine. I nodded then let the first beat sank into me.

The loud scream erupts within the venue when the song starts and I try to convince myself that it’s because of our song choice because this feel so surreal. None of these would ever happen in Korea. No one would really enjoy seeing us on a stage together, even though it has been years, a few people would still preferred viewing us as individual person who had never been connected to each other and whose dating news didn’t make the top of the portal sites for one whole month ever since that night. Just that. So, when the whole concert venue actually screamed and most of them held banners of us together, all sorts of emotion just surged through me and I almost cried while singing to a completely bright song.

Toward the end of the song, the music background stopped abruptly when it got to the last chorus, and I stared at Eric confusedly. The rehearsal went pretty well, there might have been a technical problem. The audience went dead silence and they were just as confused as me but more than confused, Eric looked a lot more nervous and this confused me even more. Eric was never nervous about a technical problem.

Suddenly, he gets down on one knee and pulls out a box from his pocket. He smiles and opens the box in front of me and inside it is a beautifully crafted ring with little diamonds making the shape of a flower’s petals and there’s a small y engraved on the band. 

    “Will you marry me?”

I freeze, the whole venue freezes and somewhere inside the venue, I could see my members spitting their cocktails. My mind goes completely blank. He proposes. Right here, right now, right in front of his family, his friends, in front of my members and his fans. He proposes.

    “I know this is way too sudden and I will understand completely if you’re not ready for this but I’ve been thinking and planning this since two months ago. I never really consider marriage but when you come into my life, my whole perspective of life changes and I realize that I don’t always have to do things alone. You’ve been an amazing person throughout this whole journey and I honestly couldn’t ask for more. Life may be very challenging in the future but I know I can go through them if you’re by my side like you always do right now. ” 

    He pauses. “And, ten years from now, I’d really loved to tell our kids how I met their amazing mother and how I proposed to you. You deserve all the wonderful things in this world, someone who will love you unconditionally through good and bad days, someone who will let you bloom to your fullest and have your back in every matter. Allow me to sing with you even when the music’s over, to sing and hold you in my arms forever. Allow me to sing with you for the rest of my life even when we’re not on stage, even when we’re not in the spotlight. Will you let me be the one to do that?” 

The next thing I know, I’m already crying and in the corner of my eyes, his parents are also crying. The audience stays completely silent and for a minute, I hesitate whether I should or not and the possibility of killing our careers scared me so much that I hate myself for even going there all over again. I almost lose him once because of this very same thought, I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.

And when I look at him staring at me earnestly, my heart screams yes even before my lip could forms the exact same word. Honestly, I’ve thought about marrying him if he ever asks. I know I heard a lot of she a while ago, I know my English isn’t that bad.

    “Yes.” I mumble and nod my head, smiling between my tears and all.

He grins then slips the ring onto my finger. When he gets up, pulls me into a hug and gives me a kiss, everyone finally seem to snap back into reality and cheer loudly for us. A lot of them are crying, especially those in the front rows, they’re crying and recording at the same time and I couldn’t even stop myself from crying so I give him a punch on his arm and he laughs and wipes my tears away then asks for some tissues from his staffs. 

For our two years anniversary, Eric surprised me with a proposal - a lifetime duet proposal.