You shiver under your thick winter coat as you look up at the snow-capped mountain in front of you. Your cheeks are so bothered by the chill mountain wind that they tingle. You turn to look at your father, who shrugs and pushes you forward.

You really didn’t want to move to this little remote town in the mountains so far in the north of China, but your father had lost his job in Beijing, and you’d been forced to move in with his family in this freezing horror.

Still, it wasn’t like you had anywhere else to go. It was go here or live on the streets. You opted for the second choice.

As you walk, you hold your cell phone in the air, attempting to get service. No such luck. All you can see is your phone background of Super Junior staring back at you. You sigh and cradle your phone in your hands. You’re going to miss them. Actually, you miss Han Geng. You’d paid all of your money to see both of them in concert, but of course, not together. That was back before you found out that your father had lost his job.

Still, you didn’t regret it. Seeing them onstage was the happiest thing in your life. The only thing that would make you happy would be if you were able to see them onstage together, just once. But you’re too late. Han Geng’s a soloist, and you can never tell if the boys even talked to each other anymore. Those boys were the only really important thing in your life, and now you don’t even have them. There’s no way they’d be so far north. It’d been hard enough to get within a mile of them when you were in Beijing. Now it was impossible.

You slide your phone back into your pocket and stomp after your father through the snow toward the town.

When you’re finally in a warm house with a cup of hot tea, you feel at least a little bit better. Your relatives are really nice, and very welcoming. You can tell that life is really hard way up there, but they seem to deal with it fairly well. You sigh and look at your no-service phone again.

“Did you hear about the man in the cabin on the mountain?” You hear your aunt say to your father. “He’s been a good help to some of the kids trying to get out of this chilly village. Some of them wanted to move to a different country. So they go up to him and ask him what other countries are like.”

“How does he know?” you hear your father ask.

“Well, dear, he’s one of those famous, flashy stars from the capital,” you hear your aunt explain. By now you’re listening as intently as you can without falling out of your chair. “He’s been to other countries and all that, and lets us ask him for help in exchange for keeping his location a secret. Apparently he came all the way up here by us to get some peace and quiet for a while. Be away from the crazy young girls and paparazzi, you know?”

“What a strange thing to do,” your father responds, “What’s his name? Maybe ______ will know him.”

“Han Geng” your aunt replies, and you can feel your heart practically explode, it’s beating so hard. What kind of a world is the one we’re living in!? He was just a small stroll up the mountain, and you could go talk to him!

“Well, ______, do you know who that is?”

“Yeah, of course,” you reply as calmly as you can manage.

“Maybe you’d like to go talk to him?” your aunt suggests, “I know you’re a city girl. You’d prefer a city in another country over living up here, wouldn’t you?”

If it meant that you could talk to Han Geng, it didn’t matter where you wanted to live. In the cold, snowy mountains was just fine. “Do you really think he could tell me about them?” you ask, trying to maintain your cool. If you let on that you just really want to go there and fangirl, then of course they’ll never let you go. He came up here to get away from all that.

“Oh, sure. I hear he’s been all kinds of places. Even spent part of his career in South Korea. He’s been to the United States, Vietnam… why don’t you go there tomorrow?”

You weren’t about to argue.

 

After a night of being way too excited to actually sleep, you were up bright and early the next morning to make the trek up to the cabin through the snow. Your father insists on going with you, just in case there are some kind of dangerous wild animals up there, no matter how much you try to assure him that the Chinese overpopulation had already pushed out most of the wild animals. Nonetheless, you end up making your way through the snow, with your father trailing behind you.

As you walk, you can almost see indents in the snow that might have once been human footprints, although with the wind blowing all of the snow around, it was hard to tell. Still, had someone walked up recently? You started plowing forward through the snow even faster. When your father, huffing and puffing, demands a rest, you impatiently stop and wait for him to catch his breath. You’re breathing pretty hard, too, but your excitement keeps you pushing forward.

Eventually, there it is, a lovely, small cabin nestled between two crests of rock. You see smoke coming from the chimney. You were finally there. Your father makes his way behind you as you sprint forward, your leg muscles burning as you crest the last hill. You approach the door, waiting for your father to get there before you knock. You hear a voice from inside tell you to enter, and, with a pounding heart, you open the door.

It takes everything you have not to drop to your knees as soon as you enter. He’s there. Han Geng. He’s really there. He has no idea who you are, but that doesn’t even matter. You don’t care at all. He’s there. Just five steps forward, and you could reach out and touch him. It was a miracle.

He looks up, and you realize there’s another person in the room, when you see the other person get up and bow to your father.

Your jaw drops open. Here, thousands of kilometers from South Korea, and you were looking at Super Junior’s Eunhyuk, bowing to your father. Could the day get any crazier?

You just stare, gaping, for quite a long time, until your father elbows you, and you finally bow, twice, once for each. “I-I-I I just moved to the village yesterday. I mean, my family’s from here originally, I mean, my father is-- and my aunt, and… and…” you stammer, hoping he’ll blame it on the cold.

Han Geng glances at Eunhyuk, who shrugs. Han Geng smiles at you, melting all of the snow and ice right off of the outside of the heavy parka your aunt gave you. “Do you want something?” He asks you.

“I… uh…” Now that you’re there, you don’t actually know what you want to say. “Can you really tell me about other countries? What is Korea like?! And Vietnam, and, and..” You really need to stop blurting things out.

Fortunately, Han Geng is really nice about it. “Do you want to sit down? It must have been a really cold walk all the way up here.”

You bite your lip and sit down, then look at your father, and back at Han Geng and Eunhyuk. Your Oppas are staring at you, waiting for you to say something. Your oppas. Not the appropriate term for a Chinese girl to use, but you’ve been so immersed in Kpop that you don’t really care anymore. They think you’re there about other countries. You think about it, then realize that lying to them would make you feel horrible about yourself. So you take a deep breath and tell the truth, not daring to look at them.

“Okay, the truth is that I’m a really big fan of Super Junior, and Han Geng, and I have been for a while, and when I was forced to move here, I originally thought it was going to be the most horrible thing in the entire world, but then I heard about you being here, and I knew I just had to come up here, sopleasedon’tgetangryatmeforbotheringyou!” You squeak, the words coming out so fast that they almost ran together. “I promise I’ll be respectful and polite, and never give away your secret… I just… I just wanted to get the chance to talk to you. I never imagined that Eunhyuk would be here…” you turn to him, the idea suddenly dawning on you. “Why are you here?”

He creased his brow, thinking about what you’d just said. Eunhyuk was a member of Super junior-M, replacing han Geng, actually, but his Mandarin wasn’t very good. Finally, he manages, “I’m here… to visit… my friend.”

You can’t help but smile. That was exactly what you’d wanted to hear.

You feel bad for your father. He’s glaring at you, actually. You realize that perhaps he’s angry at you for making up reasons to come all the way up here.

“You really promise to keep the secret?” Han Geng asks you. You nod vigorously.

“Well, then, you’re here, what do you want to ask?”

Before you know it, you’re talking to him about just about everything in your fangirl existence. Your feelings when he left. Your emotions for him as an ELF, as a Gengfan. Occasionally, you had to tap into your fangirl Korean lingo in order to help Eunhyuk out. All the while, your father listened, occasionally making input.

You talk about Super Junior, about Korea, about the United States. They’re just as sweet as you remember.

You look outside to see the sun heavy in the horizon. You must’ve been there for hours already.

“To be honest, I miss my fans when I’m here,” Han Geng suddenly admits. You look away from the window to stare back at him, wide-eyed. He continued, “If nothing else, they support me. Sometimes it’s easy to see only the bad things, and forget about the good things. You don’t remember the good memories until they don’t happen anymore. Like the fans who stop by a movie set and give us fan. You remember after that one stage, Eunhyuk, when the fans bought us all dinner?”

They laugh together for a while, and you’re quite content just to sit there and listen, but suddenly your father stands up and says “I think we have to go. It was nice to talk to you both, of course, but we really have to go back to the village.”

you really don’t want to go, but your father practically drags you out of there. Before you know it, you’re dragging your feet into the village, plodding behind your father. You hadn’t even noticed your exhaustion until you had left the cabin, and now suddenly you have no energy left.

You go into your aunts house, taking off your parka at the door. You go straight to the fire, curling up in front of it. There are some visitors in your house, talking excitedly with your aunt.

“I’m really worried about the men up on the mountain. Why do you think those men in suits were looking for him?” you hear one of them ask your aunt.

“I’m not sure, but they seemed very upset. Do you think they meant them harm?” your aunt asks.

You’re on your feet in an instant, facing her. “What? What men?”

“There were some men asking strange questions about that Han Geng. They seemed dangerous. I think they even had weapons!”

Your eyes widen, and you run to the window to look up at the mountain. There’s smoke rising from the little outcropping where you know the cabin is. Your heart plummets to your feet. No… it can’t be! You spin around, frantically grabbing your aunts arm. “What questions were they asking?! Where were they from?!”

“They said they were from Beijing. They said he was a threat to the government, and we had to tell them everything, for the sake of our own safety. Personally, I don’t know what they could possibly be talking about. He seemed perfectly nice when we met him…”

You don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t matter. Without a second thought, you stick your feet into your boots and run outside. Your father is shouting after you as you run towards the mountaintop, but you can barely hear him. Your heartbeat is pounding in your ears; your legs moving you too slowly towards the mountain. You run and run, but it seems as if you aren’t getting any closer. Why is it so cold? You realize that you’d never even bothered to put on your parka. It doesn’t matter. It’s too late to go back.

You speed up, the snow cumbersome for your footsteps. You fall into the snow in your desperation, pure vicious instinct forcing you to get back up and continue forward.

 

It’s gone. The cabin between the rock that you had left what felt like only minutes ago… is gone. Charred remains rest there instead, still practically oozing smoke. You curse everything-- the government, the timing, the nature of the world. If only you hadn’t left so early…

But if you had been there, what would you have done? They would have killed you, too.

You stumble forward, pushing through the ashes into what had once been the doorway. You choke on the smoke, but you continue forward, your sleeve pressed to your mouth. They could have escaped. The men may have just burned down the house from spite. They may have…

You look down and cry out. In the center of the remains, where the living room had once been, is a pair of blackened skeletons, burned from the heat of the flames. Your screams cause you to inhale smoke, and you cough, and your eyes water. Whether it is from the smoke of from your own tears, you cannot tell. You stumble out of the remains, your eyes still steaming.

You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what’s wrong, but you were too late. Even if you could have done anything, you were too late. You stumble forward through the snow, weeping so hard you can’t even see where your feet are stepping. You fall forward, get up, and continue down into the snow. Finally, you fall down again, and remain there. It’s so cold. It’s freezing. But you don’t have the strength to get up. Your tears stain the white snow, and you can’t stop. He’s gone. He’s really gone.

“Are you alright?” you hear someone ask you. You open your eyes, wondering if you’re so close to hypothermia that you’re hallucinating.

Han Geng is looking down at you, concerned. “Are you okay? You must be freezing!”

“But you… you… the skeletons…” you stutter, sitting up.

“We had to convince them that they succeeded somehow. I said some things in public that the government didn’t like. They came after me. You didn’t… you didn’t come here just because…?”

Your emotions explode. You fall forward, wrapping your arms around his waist and crying into his chest. Normally you’d never do this. You would give him his space. But right now, you’re just too relieved to know that he’s alive. That they’re both alive, that they’re still friends. You’re too happy and too relieved. You hope he forgives you.

He wraps his arms around your shoulders and lets you stay there. Maybe he doesn’t mind it at all.

So you cry.