“Are you scared of me now?”

Kyungsoo always saw too much.

It wasn’t even like you could deny it. He could feel it in the distance you kept during the kiss. He probably bumped up against the stout wall you had installed around your heart when he got close enough to be classified as a minor threat.

But this was something you could handle. You had prepared for this much at least. You knew that in coming to Korea, the chances of running into him again were very high.

You hadn’t quite figured out a plan of action in the off-chance that a casual run-in turned into a drunken hookup and subsequent morning-after love confession with whimpering apologies from both sides, but what you knew for certain was that you weren’t about to fall again.

You wouldn’t let yourself be put into the position to be hurt again. If you had to keep him at arm’s length to make that happen then that’s simply what you would do. The softness you saw in his eyes when he looked at you; the hurt you could read like a graphic novel on his oversized features could poke and prod at you all it wanted; you would not waver. You had survived the last six months, what was a few more minutes with him close enough to hold; close enough to touch; close enough for the warmth of his lips to leave a lingering tingle?

You took your time answering his question. It was a heavy one — Were you scared of him? — your tongue felt too dry when you finally coaxed some motion from it.

His eyes glanced down at your lips when you spoke.

“I would say,” you inhaled with the words as you searched through your vocabulary for the right one and midway through the exhale you continued, “I’m smarter now.”

Your answer sent him moving. His eyes fell from your face and his hand lifted to tap fingertips in an absent-minded drift over his furrowed eyebrows and he blinked fast with the harsh lighting from your bathroom vanity reflecting a flickering wetness in his eyes.

“I think I’m just going to focus on being more careful with myself from now on.” And with my heart — but, you held the word back.

“Because you’re scared of me,” he spoke again, repeating the same words as before only this time his hand fell over his eyes as he closed out the world for a moment. It wasn't a question this time. Your response had solidified in his mind the real reason for your reluctance for closeness. The real reason why you were so desperate now to get him out of your home. Kyungsoo could feel it and he was reeling as he took a step back.

His shoulder hit a door frame and he was out of places to go. This bathroom was tiny, just as the rest of your apartment was tiny and you listened to the sounds of the water from the shower behind you, running down the drain. There was a very slight mist in the air from the steam the hot water produced. It was hardly enough to fog the mirror even. Kyungsoo’s reflection looked clear enough for you to easily make out the pained lines on his face that his hands rubbed over. You could see the tremble in those hands and when he dropped them, his head sagged forward.

“I’ll,” he swallowed roughly and the words were interrupted by the breath he pulled, “fix it. I can fix this, please...if you—”

There was a war inside your chest. You hated the admission. You hated this truth.

Yes. You were scared.

“—if you just let me try—”

You were terrified. You were so frightened that he would reach out and rip the last bits of your heart out that you wanted nothing more to do with it. You wanted him to leave. You wanted the temptation of the warmth and kindness in his eyes to vanish so you wouldn't have to resist him any longer. How much longer could you possibly say no to him before the single syllable changed to ‘well… maybe.’

Kyungsoo’s focus was on you again and you caught a flash of movement in his posture. A shift of his balance that made him surge forward. It was minimal in depth yet when he moved you moved; only your legs carried you in the opposite direction. Away from his advancement. You stepped back as he stepped forward and he noticed it.

And he stopped.

Your ears were humming. The thick steam that poured from the shower clouded your peripheral vision and Kyungsoo lifted both of his hands to cover of his nose and his mouth as he gasped once softly and shook his head in a shallow rocking motion.

“You,” the hands muffled his words, “don't want me here. You don't want me close to you at all.” He sounded close to tears to finally know this ugly truth about you.

No. No, this was vulgar. This beautiful human before you should not feel such pain; you could feel the shards of your heart scraping and clawing inside of your rib cage and it begged and it pleaded for some way to comfort him but your mind would win with its common sense and timer that ticked down the minutes until this whole ordeal was over, the knowledge that he would leave and take with him every last chance you had at a love so painful and all-consuming — your rationality held on fast and you stood stubbornly on your own two feet, curled into yourself with arms wrapped tightly around your stomach to keep your insides from spilling out all over the floor. You had to try your hardest to keep yourself together right now. You were the only one you could count on for this.

“Kyungsoo,” you spoke over the sound of the running water and your heart and your mind were at war, “I just... I can’t.”

“You can’t what? You can’t be with me? You can’t forgive me? You can’t be in the same room as me?”

You felt like your voice had been snatched away and you hated this look on his face. It crushed you. It destroyed you. How had you gone from so determined... to this?

He still had your heart and all of the power of such an absolute ownership. But you had what was left of your pride and it would have to do.

The steam was beginning to thin now. The hot water was gone and nothing at all had been accomplished with it. What a waste.

So much time had passed that you were certain a few more minutes here and he would miss his second flight. The consequences of this were beginning to stack; mounted up high as each moment brought with it more and more real-life dangers. Greater than just the damage to your silly little heart.

“Kyungsoo, your flight.” You whispered it like the filthy word it was and you felt like a coward or calling upon such an excuse.

“I’ll go,” he said with his eyes wide and trained down at the floor below his legs. It was trance-like, the way he responded. “I’ll go because you want me to go, but I’m still going to fix this.”

When he looked up into your face you could see the clarity of the room written all over his face. And he was looking into your eyes with a different look; different than before. It was brazen and it was oddly strong. A new aura you hadn’t seen all morning was bursting through his big brown eyes and he aimed them in your direction.

“Look, I made a mistake. That was me...my faults, my insecurities— I’m the one that ed this up. You said that you’re smarter now but there wasn’t anything dumb about falling in love and honestly when I thought that I’d never see you again...it ing killed me.” He held you in his gaze as he spoke to you, legs no longer standing within the doorway of your bathroom. He had already taken several steps away from you the moment he noticed you flinch away from him.

“And I know you haven’t said it yet—” he was leaving as promised but your heart held onto him and pulled hard. It had no effect. His feet kept on retreating and he was leaving now. Just as you had wanted. Right?

“—but I know you still love me. You’re hiding it — trying to be strong or ..or stubborn—” His vision sharpened and he lost some of his gumption on the word stubborn when the mention of such a bratty word made your lips pull into a frown and you did not fight the urge to roll your eyes. As if this was mere stubbornness. As if a broken heart could be labeled with such a word. Stubborn was something a petulant child was. You had been nearly destroyed. You were trying to live now.

“—or whatever it is but it’s still there, I know it. You still love me too...you just have to remember it.”

As if you could ever forget. You were biting down on your bottom lip with such a force that it was beginning to feel sore between your teeth. Your arms were crossed over your chest so tightly your muscles felt the strain and he wasn’t waiting for any more of a response from you. He was leaving. You held him in your sights until he simply was not there anymore.

“I’ll see you in Japan.” He called out from the living room and you felt the forceful exhale of the breath you had been holding send your body downward as your legs sank and your used up body leaned against the bathroom wall.

The soft click of your front door closing was the final sound to come from outside of your bathroom and you took a full five minutes of existing in your own skin before you pulled your bones back up with your own muscles and pulled the T-shirt roughly from your body.

You leaped into the ice-cold stream of running water and your lungs gasped as the freezing cold inundated your every cell. You sputtered and you shook and withstood the shock of it until your persistence began to pay off and you could feel your body becoming numb to it. Growing used to the pain until you hardly even noticed it anymore. It was an excellent metaphor for your existence up until this point in Korea and if you could take this, then you might just be able to withstand whatever other bull was coming next.

Your rescheduled flight to Osaka was easy enough to arrange and by the time the wheels touched down on the runway you were beginning to feel the strong clutches of that morning’s hangover headache finally beginning to fade.

The headache medicine you picked up with the emergency contraceptive pills at the pharmacy on the way to the airport helped ease you into your recovery and with a little food in your belly, you actually began to feel like you might just live to see another day.

You didn’t usually travel alone on work assignments. Perhaps this slip of your memory had one benefit; your flight was peaceful. Not that you wanted extra time to sit and stew inside your own head particularly, but at least you didn’t have to converse with anyone in a language that took just enough effort to become exhausting after a while.

It was probably because you lived here now, in Korea, but lately, you’d been feeling more and more fatigued with the language. Not the translating itself, that was fine and only sporadically demanding, but spending day after day talking to so many people had begun to make you feel rather worn down. It hadn’t been like this before moving here and you attributed it to the change in your job. More responsibilities, more stress — that sorta thing.

Your mind wandered in the taxi to the hotel and you recalled the phone calls in the beginning. The long video calls with Kyungsoo in which you’d go on for what felt like hours about your day. The days when you came to visit him and you’d spend entire nights up late with him just talking and talking about anything and everything you could both think to talk about. The last thing you had longed for was peace and quiet. You craved his words and he pulled yours from your own lips with open-ended questions an insatiable need to know everything you possibly had to share with him. You’d never grown tired of it. Not like now.

It had to be the move. It had to be the full and total immersion in a new country and the demands of your new job.

When you arrived at the hotel you keyed a quick text to the manager in charge of on-location staff assignments and you were instructed on your reporting location to begin your preparations for the fan meeting. There were scripts to go over for final approval, teams of staff members who approached you for small tasks and larger tasks, and all at once you were back into it. There was a rush. This felt hectic just like it had felt with EXO in Europe last year and you felt at times that a single translator on staff might not be enough for all of the work. If only you could split your body into two and handle two of the tasks at once then perhaps you could sign off on these interview questions while simultaneously monitoring the group chats of which you had multiple notifications flashing; all of them needed your attention.

Time was moving too fast and you limped along trying to catch up with the rush of work your late arrival had piled upon you. You’d had to pee for the better part of an hour and you couldn't even think about sitting down to eat something. There was simply so much work and not enough time. There was equipment to wear; an earpiece and mic that would feed your voice into the ears of select staff and group members for you to provide real-time translations as the show progressed.

The hosts spoke and you spoke, usually reading along from the already pre-approved script of questions and commentary, but careful to pay close attention for ad-libs and changes and when it came time for you to translate for the members as they addressed the audience, the sensation of hearing your own voice echoing throughout the entire arena to raucous applause and screams was about as surreal as it could get.  

Your performance was far from perfect. You stumbled on a few words and especially upon hearing the sound of your own voice over that crowd, you could feel the pressure mounting inside of your chest. Your mind blanked on a few words and you had to scramble while still trying to sound as professional as possible to find another way to say things. The whole experience left you feeling hot in the face and flustered as hell and you have never been so happy to witness the final reluctant goodbyes at the end of an event in your whole life.

The members waved their hands and blew their kisses and the fans in the crowd screamed and cried and you felt like you might just collapse from the genuine relief that it was actually finally over.

You had done it. It was done. Bumbles and mistakes had been made. There was nothing you could do about that now. It was over. You pulled the wiring from around your neck, removing the earpiece carefully as you unplugged yourself and handed off the equipment to the member of staff who was collecting mics to carefully catalog and place into rightful locations and you honestly could feel a cold sweat all over your skin. Your hands were shaking and you felt just a little nauseated. You needed some downtime. You still had to pee but also you needed to sit in complete silence in a bathroom stall and not have to say another word to another human being for at least a few minutes. An hour was out of the question; your phone was already vibrating with message notifications.  

You left your phone inside your back pocket and made your way toward the bathrooms. It could wait. Whatever it was could wait for five minutes.

You found the bathrooms and your bladder was screaming as you pushed through the stall door, quickly pulled down your jeans and heard the sound before you felt the rectangle piece of technology that you had very thoughtlessly left in your back pocket vanish with a clunk and splash combination.

.

.

and !

You stood in a flash and turned to look inside the toilet bowl; every single wasted wish and hope you had used up from the falling stars and blown out birthday candles mocking you as you spun to look. Please, please, please no, not your phone. Not in the toilet, not the 3-year-old treasure you held closest to your heart that was so full of your entire life you never even considered going through the trouble of replacing it. It was an older model. Definitely not waterproof and there it sat at the bottom of the toilet bowl. Tiny bubbles were rising from the corner and you leaped into action.

hygiene, this was an emergency. You reached into the water and pulled it out and it dripped and dripped as the water drained from the inside pouring back into the toilet bowl. You scrambled for some paper. For anything to dry it, anything to save this and it was so blank and so black and so dead looking and it was still dripping.  

You pressed the buttons on the side. You pressed the home button, you held buttons down, you shook out the rest of the water from somewhere inside the bottom speaker and the toilet paper stuck to your fingers when you tried to blot and dry as much as possible.

Your messages. Your photos. Your whole life.

The phone had soaked up that water like a sponge and you could feel the stress from the day mounting over your head because you still had to pee, goddammit!

You stared down at the phone, sitting motionless on a pile of wet paper and even the relief of emptying your bladder could not have any sort of significant impact on you now.

You had the pictures with him in there.

There was an entire folder dedicated to him. Dated pictures that documented every single visit, every single dish you both made together, every single gift exchanged. Super secret folders with passwords to protect them with pictures you both took together. A kiss on the cheek, a sweet smile on his face. A giggle when his eyes disappeared completely. The video you snuck while he slept one night and you were elated to capture the sound of your name mumbled in his sleep.

All gone.

You sat on the toilet in silence. This wasn’t the kind of silence you craved a few minutes ago. And yet you were bathed in it now. With filthy feeling hands and a useless and broken phone and a useless and broken heart inside your chest and your emotions mounting the longer you sat here remembering everything that had been on that phone.

It was gone and he was gone too.

The burning began in your eyes and it only lasted a second before you felt the tears cresting and spilling down your cheeks. Your nose stuffed up almost instantly and you felt consumed by loss.

At least you were alone. Your lungs trembled and stuttered and you breathed through your mouth as the tears fell endlessly down your face and you cried. You cried for the memories, you cried for the love and for the disappointment of it all. You cried for yourself and you cried for Kyungsoo and you cried and you cried alone in this bathroom in an event venue in Osaka, Japan when you really should have been finding some sort of solution to this.

Maybe you could save it. Maybe you could open it up and dry it with a hotel blow dryer, or maybe you could find a kitchen and find some rice to soak it in overnight, you had heard once that that was the way to fix wet phones.

You couldn't just cry about this. You had to get up and out of here and do something to fix this. Weren’t there people who could fix these things? Cell phone repair shops who dealt with water damage and data recovery who would go into your phone and find your super secret photos of your super celebrity idol boyfriend and you locked in a ing selfie kiss and possibly take that photo and spread it all over the internet and cause a career-ending scandal?

.

Still, you were up and out of the stall. Still, you were washing your hands and shaking every last drop of water from out of your phone as you attempted to somehow cleanse the outside of it with paper towels because of disgusting toilet water and all the potential bio-contaminants that involved.

You were thinking of e-coli and botulism and Ebola and any number of other things that could possibly attach to your face if ever you held this thing up to your ear once more.

You wrapped it in the paper towels and held it just a little more carefully away from you as you moved and a quick glance in the mirror told you that while it did look like you had been crying, your makeup had been waterproof and your face had an after-crying glow that honestly didn’t look too bad. At worst you looked a bit drunk maybe.

You vacated the bathroom in search of some solution.

What you found was a dressing room with the letters EXO on them and you knew you would encounter plenty of staff members inside to at least help you brainstorm your next move. Perhaps they had a stash of staff phones they could let you use for the rest of this assignment so you could log in to the messenger program and continue your work duties.

On the other side of the door was a flurry of movement and activity. Staff worked to de-wardrobe, label, and organize items and bodies were moving in all directions as people did their jobs quickly so they could be done with it and finally get to close out this day’s schedule properly.

A pair of eyes caught your own and having finished changing his clothes he looked up from his seated position on a sofa in the center of the room with a genuine double take at your state.

Had you really looked that upset? You were probably a damn mess. You could feel the remnants of your emotions sitting at the back of your throat and Sehun stood up and took strides in your direction with a question on his eyebrows.

“Hey...you okay?” his head dropped close to your level and you shook your head back and forth as you held your hands out to show him your dead phone carefully wrapped in several brown paper towels from the bathroom.

It hadn’t occurred to you that he wouldn't know what you were showing him. Something hidden inside paper towels. H