April 17, 2016,

8:27 AM,

Berlin, Germany

4 Missed Calls, Unknown Caller ID.

3 Voice Messages.

      The morning sun blazed through the blinds, and as Chaerin stared at the blinking lights on her phone, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She knew who it was – hell, this had been recurring on a daily basis for the past couple of weeks, ever since that night in Paris. Memories flooded her mind, moments of a life she had lived before, those that hurt and those that made her hurt even more because, once upon a time, she had been happy.

      Park Soo Jun.

      ‘I’m so sorry babe,’ the voice message plays as she holds her phone to her ear, shaking and her shirt. His voice was familiar yet not – like a whisper coming from the distance, and you know it, but you don’t, and all you want to do is hide and yell at them to stop, because it hurt. It hurt. ‘You know I didn’t mean to do it, I really didn’t. I was a coward – I still am, and, I am so sorry. I was just scared, but I know it doesn’t justify what I had done. Nothing does. Please, forgive me. Are… are you okay? The two of you? I –’

      In anger, she stops the message from playing and heatedly deletes the other two. She could feel the edges of her eyes burn with a threat of tears, but she wipes them away. Three years ago, she had decided not to cry for him. Not to cry for them. He was not worth her tears. Instead, she would hold her head high and live on with what she could.

      Her once peaceful life had been rocked by waves and earthquakes following a series of instances, most an outcome of over stretched teenage foolishness and an innocent belief that loves concurs all. A life she could never get back. She had learnt the hard way that family honour comes first and first only, and as much as she was appalled by her father’s decision to cut her off, she had never resented him. She could never, for she had been wrong, only in ways different than what her father thought.

      She loved her father though.

      She still does. And hell, she misses her family.

      “You’re awake.” A groggy voice comes from behind, and she is startled. Fumbling with her phone in a not-so-obvious way, she forces on a smile and faces the rapper hoping he wouldn’t trace any sign of her previous trip down memory lane.

      “Good Morning,” she chirps in a pitch higher than normal, and she wants to strangle herself when he raises his brow lazily. He did look dashing even with his bed head and his overgrown stubble, but she refused to let herself think about that. She clears , “Since when do you wake up so early?”

      “Didn’t sleep,” he mumbles as he plops himself on the stool next to her, hiding his body in an oversized cardigan that she had recognized as a Ralph Lauren. He gives her one last glance and covers his face with his forearm as buries himself on the kitchen counter. “Those mattresses are made of brick and cement. My back hurt like a and I couldn’t even trace a hint of comfort.”

      “My apologies, your highness.” She discreetly puts her phone in her back pocket, and finds herself calming down in his company. “I will make sure the butlers fix your lodgings right away.”

      He scoffs, the voice muffled. “Could have been possible if we had stayed at the Ritz Carlton or something.”

      “Your hiding would have also been discovered by your fans. For your safety, not mine.”

      “I know. Why do you think I agreed to stay in this damned apartment anyways?” He mumbles in agitation, and she can’t help but think he sounds more like a child than a fully grown man. She smiles at his antics.

      “When you learn to live with the least that you could, you also learn to treasure the small beauties of life that are usually swept under the carpet in the fast and buzzing life of the fortunate and the famous. Don’t you think?”

      She sounded wistful, for she herself had learnt that the hard way.

      He had heard her alright, but he had chosen to remain silent. What else would one say in response to that without sounding like a stuck up ? Not like he hadn’t portrayed himself like that already. It was an automatic reaction he had mastered in his interactions in the backstage of the media. Rather, it was a way of hiding behind a mask of coldness and materiality that started to mesh with his skin and he later found was very difficult to take off.

      “Where should we go get breakfast?” he finds himself asking instead, not looking up at her puffed up face. Had she been crying before he made his presence known? The image of her facing the window with a hunched back and a phone to her ear was fixated on his mind, and as twisted at it was, having someone else’s troubles in mind keeps his at bay. The night was already too unbearable for him. She was everywhere.

3:01 PM

      “When I said breakfast, I hadn’t meant lunch. I actually meant breakfast.”

      “Just one more shot. I promise.”

      Chaerin fixes the wide-angle lens on her DSLR camera as she lays on the floor, her focus on one of the dimly lit alleyways they had stumbled upon – the tip of the Berlin Tower was peaking behind the ancient architecture covered in crawling leaves and blooming flowers. It told a story in a picture – wherever you are in life, good days will come and you will carry the good and the bad, but hope and beauty will perspire from that.

      Jiyong sighs in agitation and balances the camera bag strap on his shoulder as it starts to hurt, and he wonders what in hell brought him here to begin with. They were supposed to go down for breakfast but all he got instead was a tour in the habitual areas of only the greatest tourist attraction in Europe. Chaerin insisted she wasn’t a ‘tourist’, but rather a traveller. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he falls into the former description.

      “Oppa, could you come to my left so we could capture a shadow as well?” she mumbles, waving her hand in a hurry. Cursing under his breath, he moves to her other side and digs the heel of his shoe into the gravel floor. Chaerin smiles as the shadow reflects on the shot, “This could be the best shot I’ve got since we’ve arrived in Europe.”

      “Is it, now?” He meant to be sarcastic, but his underlining was either missed or ignored.

      “The last time I got a shot this good was of the Chateau D’if.” She looks up momentarily at him, and she smiles when she catches his eyes on her. “Remember the photograph I showed you when we first met?”

      “On the train to Paris?” She nods, and he does too, the encounter not something he could forget in the near future. As the leather straps dig into his shoulder blade, she shifts it around a little. “You spoke too much back then,” he teases her, “still do as a matter of fact.”

      “That’s not the point.” She rolls her eyes, but she smiles nonetheless before going back to her camera. “I rarely get the chance to find good shots. Shots that have a meaning – a message.”

      Curiosity beats him. “What had been the most meaningful photograph you’ve taken?”

      The blogger pauses for a fleet second, a broken smile framing her bright red lips. She plays with the focus for a second and goes back to shooting. Jiyong thought she wouldn’t answer as her silence lingered between them, and he was in the middle of hoping the world would swallow him whole when she replied.

      “A photograph I took back in my college days.” She startles him, and his focus is on her. She focuses on the flowers on the wall, distracting herself. “Of a common man in the middle of upper class people, his back facing the skyline of New York at sunset, his head bowing down and his hand fisted by his side. It was a lot in one frame – determination, fearlessness, ambition and helplessness all at once.” She gulps, constricting, having mentioned a topic she’d been straying away from since– “It was beautiful.”

      He opens his mouth only to close it right after. “Sounds magnificent,” He settles for, “may I see it?”

      “Depends,” She shrugs. Without giving him a chance to retort, she looks up at him from the ground, picking herself up on her knees then on her feet, a satisfied look on her face as she scrolls past the images she had captured. “I’m done,” she says, “Let’s go get you that breakfast. I’m starving too.”

      After walking around and navigating through the rather busy streets, they find themselves at a modernistic looking restaurant, the whole interior polished in shiny white and floor-to-ceiling windows all over the front. “This is on me,” Chaerin grins, looking back at the fidgety man. “You’ll love this – they have the best breakfast menu in all of Berlin.”

      “How do you know?” he his eyebrow in amusement as he trails behind her into the building, her camera never leaving her hands.

      “I’ve been here before. How else would I know?” she answers dismissively, immediately seating herself on a table by the window, overlooking the ancient roads of the city. Jiyong follows suit, sitting across her, and makes sure his sunglasses are secured.

     “You’ve been to Berlin before?” He couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice.

     “With my family,” she shrugs, smiling at a waiter as he hands them the menu books. “It was a long time ago.”

      She looks up at him, and he’s looking at her, and their eyes meet, and it’s like back in Tomorrowland, and she’s mesmerized by the deepness of his pupils, and it’s pulling her in, like a worm hole she can’t get out of, and her breath hitches and she’s struck silent. By the Godly heavens, he made her speechless. Panicking, she looks down right away at the menu, and she thinks he can hear her heart beat and the words don’t make sense anymore and she’s dizzy.

      Jiyong had felt the tension between them and swallows, and he can feel the flow of his blood through his veins. The last time he had felt anything like that was with a certain model and he didn’t know if he should hate this or embrace it, so he ignores it.

      Breaking the thick silence, he opens the menu and says the first thing that came to his mind. “I’ve never been to any European cities other than Paris and London.”

      “How come?” She doesn’t look up, still flustered. “Aren’t you a world star or something?”

      “Or something,” he nods. “We don’t exactly have the liberty to do what we want to.”

      “We?”

      “My band and I,” He smirks, amused by the question, and he looks at her bowed down head, and it’s interesting. “Bigbang, you know?”

      “Oh,” she blushes, because she knew and she made a fool out of herself. She grins and he finds himself tilting his face to get a better look at her. She was pretty, alright. The kind of beauty you see on online blogs – what was that website fans bugged him about? Tumblr, maybe.

       “Who else would it be,” he teases, getting an apologetic shrug from her. After ordering their food, they continue the wait in silence, Jiyong unconsciously takes out his phone and his eyes catches the message he had received from Choi Seunghyun nearly a week ago. Should he or shouldn’t he reply?

From: Choi Seunghyun

Yang SeungHo had been convicted of usage from that night last summer – the investigations are being dragged upon the artists he’s associated with, and the authorities had been asking if that was the reason you had left. We’ve all been trying to get to you, and God knows how many times I’ve called. Jiyong, we are all worried sick about you. I’m in Germany now shooting my movie, and if you’re anywhere in Europe, drop by and let’s talk.

      Xin had been investigated for drug usage. Xin had been convicted. The realities