somewhere in between
-haebaragi

Somewhere in between, Kyuhyun fell in love.

Somewhere between their awkward eye contacts and stiff hand-holding, Kyuhyun
realized that Seohyun (Joohyun) had grown in him.

“SeoKyu,” the “Maknae Couple,” the “Official Couple”—these weren’t supposed to be real.
Seohyun wasn’t supposed to be real.

(His feelings weren’t supposed to be real.)

Joohyun was just his dongsaeng, his hoobae as Super Junior and his sunbae in terms
of training years. They always meet casually in the company buildings and there is an
exchange of formal greetings, a smile perhaps but there is nothing more to it and nothing
less. They were anything but special in each other’s lives: she minds her goals in life,
he minds his starcraft.

But then the company looses a piece of its mind and decides to pair them up for the following
SM Town concerts (as if the SEOUL music video weren’t enough) and Kyuhyun wonders how
in the world he could share a stage with a woman who is married.

At first he was reluctant to hold her hand and it was obvious in her eyes that she too,
was uncomfortable. There was a glisten of hesitation in the way her cold hands touched
the edges of his palm, as if she was committing adultery to his make-believe husband.
Honestly speaking, Kyuhyun was challenged. It was the same want he had in his games
when he had to outwit his opponent and win victory (win her).

In the end though, he looses and she is the one who wins his heart.

Her wedding ended and she had welcomed him fully, evident in the way her hands
rested safely inside his as they finish their performance and take a bow, and the way
she easily tangles with him even after the lights dim.

Now Kyuhyun would be a phony if he didn’t admit that he is starting to like Seohyun.

So his Donghae-hyungie was not wrong when he said that he is starting to be obvious.

“You can’t do so much, Kyuhyun,” Donghae tells him one day while practicing a foreign song
along the lines of I miss the times, and what happened to us. “Fans would react sooner
or later and it won’t be nice.”

At times, his Teukie-hyung would also give him a piece of his experience.

“After scandals started to spread, you know what happened next. Just be careful.”

Then again, Kyuhyun is just as stubborn as Joohyun. And maybe his hyungs were right,
but his Heechul-hyung could be right too, right?

“You can date whoever you like. You got the company’s back. And you got mine.”

So the next day he meets Joohyun was the day they arrive in Singapore. She sits
just a little apart from his front, but still a strategic position to catch glimpses of her
every now and then (or the Art of Stealing Glances, as what his Donghae-hyungie
taught him).

They win that night and they had fun and she was happy and he never failed to
look at her. Her smiles were his addiction, her laughter his world. Sometimes it wasn’t
enough that he would steal a glance from her and so he’d taken up courage and calls
her out, asking something random, something out of the blue, just so he could see her
face to face and his longing would be satiated.

Just by looking at her, Kyuhyun notices that Joohyun isn’t the dongsaeng, the sunbae,
the hoobae, that she once was to him. She jumps and he realizes she is everything
he has ever wanted; she dances and he realizes she is the most beautiful in the world;
she smiles at him and he realizes that somewhere in between, Cho Kyuhyun had fallen
in love with Seo Joohyun.

What he didn’t know is that (maybe) somewhere in Seo Joohyun, she had fallen for him too.