Jongsuk did call me from the parking lot, just as he'd promised. I missed the call.

In my defense, I was packed in the elevator with a group of people who'd just arrived, all talking over each other. if I heard a ringtone, I probably just assumed it belonged to one of them. It wasn't until I got off on my floor and it rang again in the quiet hallway that i realized the noise was coming from my pocket. I pulled it out.

"You might be annoyed now," he said, "but that song will grow on you. Someday, it might even make you cry."

When I remembered this later, it broke whatever pieces were left of my heart. But that was later.

"You put AOA's song as my ringtone?" I asked.

"While I was getting my bag," he told me. "And before you get mad about me hacking your password," he said, "you really should make it harder to figure out."

"How did you know it was Wooyoung?"

"You did say he was the alarm code at the house," he told me. I had, while telling a story about this was the way I learned to spell his name as a child. Wooyoung was our password for everything. "I took a guess."

"Well," I said, still working through all this. I'd had to stop walking just to catch up, so to speak. "Now you know all my secrets."

"Don't worry. They're safe with me."

I turned, looking out over the balcony to the street below. Somewhere, a car was driving away from me, putting a mile, then another mile between us.

"What am I supposed to tell people when they ask me why I have AOA ringtone?" I asked him now.

"That you're their biggest fan because  your boyfriend loves them," he replied. Boyfriend. I liked the sound of that. "And then you show them home screen."

"My -" I pulled my phone down, pressing the home button. There was Jongsuk smiling in the center with AOA. I put it back to my ear. "Okay, that's pretty cute."

"I'm glad you think so. As we were driving off I started to worry that maybe you would hate it. Hold on a second." I heard a voice in the background, then Jongsuk saying something. "Look, we're stopping for gas and snacks. I'll call back in a bit, okay? You'll know me by 'Soulmate, My Other Half'."

"What?"

"The name of the song, Su! Come on! How are you going to date an AOA's number one fan if you don't know their songs."

I smiled, turning back to my room. "I'll get right on that."

"You can start with your iTunes library, under Recently purchased. Talk to you in a few!"

With that he was gone, leaving me to just stare, open mouthed, as I went to my iTunes to find, yes, five new songs, all by AOA. I'd listened to them all, over and over again, in between the dozens of short conversations we'd have in the following hours we each headed back to respective homes. With Jongsuk in my ear, the flight back to Gwangju felt, and looked, entirely different. I felt like a different  girl. I would never again be who I was when I walked down those beach stairs, took off my shoes, and stepped into the sand. And I was so, so, glad.

Once home, we talked constantly, and when we weren't talking, we were texting or chatting face-to-face on FaceTime. Despite my having dated a few guys already, it wasn't until Jongsuk that I understood what all the love songs and sappy movie ending really were all about. I finally understood Gayeon's romanticism, the hopefulness that seeps into every part of your life when you know someone loves you in that way. I ate, slept, and dreamed Jongsuk. When he wasn't in my ear or on my screen in one way or another, I was running over our night together in my mind, hour by hour, so I'd be sure not to forget a single detail.

As we'd promised, we immediately began to make plans to get together again. His dad, still eager to get on Jongsuk's good side post-divorce, said he'd buy him a ticket down for his fall break, which was in mid-October, overlapping by a few days with mine. I circled the days on my desk calendar and began a countdown on my phone, getting teased regularly by Eomma, Wooyoung, and Gayeon about my visible impatience with how slowly time was passing.

"I have never seen you like this," Gayeon said to me, looking as I hummed along to AOA on the car radio as we drove to school the first day of senior year. "It's like you've been body swapped or something."

"What?" I said. "You've been in love a lot of times."

"Not like that. This, what's going on here?" She twirled her finger at me. "It's some serious first love stuff. Sometimes I look over at you and you're just sitting there, smiling at nothing."

"I am not."

"You are. AndI'm jealous." She sighed, checking her reflection in the visor mirror. "I want an Jongsuk, too."

I couldn't blame her. To me, he was perfect: this gorgeous, funny, smart boy who thought I, Su, hung the moon as well. It was like my life had been silent in a way before, and now there was a soundtrack, the very best music playing along in the background at every moment. You didn't miss it when it wasn't there. You didn't know to. But once it was, nothing ever sounded the same again.

"Tell me where you are now," I'd say to Jongsuk when we talked before school, and then at lunch, after last period, and several more times up until bed, when he was the last voice I heard before going to sleep.

"Walking across the quad to practice, stuffing my face with a bag of chips," he said. "Where are you?"

"Heading to the coffee shop for afternoon caffeine for Eomma and Wooyoung."

"Double shot for her, no?"

"Just the one. She already sounded like she was buzzing."

He just knew me so well, already. Mostly because we talked so much, but there was something else, as well. The time we'd been together had been so short and yet so intense that everything was sped up. I already felt like I'd known forever. This was what love was. I knew it now. And it changed everything.

"When this boy does comes," Wooyoung said to me in early September, as I sat texting with Jongsuk after school as he rode the bus to a football game, "I'm going to have to sit him down and have a talk."

"You?" Eomma asked from her desk, where she was busy checking a spreadsheet of attendees to the next wedding. "Isn't that my job?"

"I'm the father figure. If anyone get to sit cleaning a gun while making the boy squirm talking about honor and chivalry, it's me."

"A gun?" I said.

"You maced yourself the last time you tried to carry pepper stray," Eomma told him.

"Well, I obviously wouldn't do that while giving this talk," he replied.

"No one is lecturing Jongsuk about anything," I told them both, using my stern voice. "We're all just going to make him feel welcome and show him the best of Gwangju."

"Which is what?" Wooyoung asked.

"Suzy, of course," Eomma said. "That's what he's coming for after all, right?"

At this, I blushed, even as my phone beeped, Jongsuk responding to my last message. NOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

PUTTING UP WITH MY MOM AND WOOYOUNG TEASING ME ABOUT YOU.

HA! CAN'T WAIT TO MEET THEM.

"Look at our girl," Wooyoung said then. "She's crazy in love. We didn't ruin her with our bad attitudes after all."

"Not yet," Eomma said. "Remember, they've only spent one time together."

Wooyoung gave her a look. "Soojung, for goodness's sake. Let the girl have her fun. It's not her fault we're all dried up and unlovable."

"Speak for yourself. I am very lovable."

Wooyoung laughed. Eomma caught my eye, then mouthed an I'm sorry, looking genuinely apologetic. I knew in truth she was happy for me, but just worried, as her own love story hadn't ended well. But this was different. I was different. And Jongsuk, well, was Jongsuk. He would never do anything to hurt me. It never occurred to me that, in fact, it might be someone else.