08

a heart hard as nails

Dispatch: Kim Jongin (Kai) & Jung Soojung (Krystal) caught on vacation, rekindling relationship from 2012!

“Look Eunjoo, an airplane!”

Sehun danced a spoonful of porridge in the air, letting it do a few turns before it safely landed into his daughter’s willing mouth. Watching her mash the already soft rice grains with her baby teeth, Sehun had a brief moment of reprieve before his eyes caught his son overturning his entire bowl.

Mornings at their household were both a picture of domestic bliss and a whirlwind of trouble. Having two children under the age of five meant that one parent had to be shuttling about the kitchen, cooking up a storm, and the other had to make sure the kids weren’t getting into a food fight. Irene usually took up both, but it being a Saturday meant that Sehun could not shirk his duties.

Thankfully, the scent of eggs and crisp bacon wafted through his nostrils, becoming more fragrant by the second. Irene strode towards the table, carrying her and Sehun’s version of breakfast. Upon seeing his mother armed with a frying pan and an icy glare, three-year-old Sungwoo sheepishly picked up his bowl, attempting to scoop the contents back into it.  

“Sorry mom,” he mumbled, staring at her with his puppy eyes long enough for her gaze to soften.

“I’ll get you a new one, but no throwing your bowl again, okay, Sungwoo?” Irene replied, his cheek. “What did Mommy say about food?”

He looked up, thinking deeply. “No wasting food?”

“That’s right, good boy,” she smiled.

Sehun, a spectator of the exchange, looked at them in bewilderment. “Why do you only listen to Mommy all the time?” he gaped. He mock-pouted at his son. “That’s not fair!”

“That’s what happens when you’re not at home enough – your kids begin to realize who calls the shots,” Irene chuckled, setting a new bowl of porridge in front of her son, before settling in the seat across Sehun.

Sehun chortled, shaking his head. He pressed a kiss on the back of his wife’s palm, and reclined in his seat. “Oh, Joohyun, if you were in EXO at this time of the year, you wouldn’t be home that much either,” he replied.

Irene nodded empathetically. The past week was New Year’s, but Sehun and his entire group had been summoned to the company. They would think that scandals would have minimal effect on a group that had been in the industry for more than ten years, but old habits die hard. In fact, with more members coming of age, each new year would be a waiting game for the next person’s romantic entanglements to be given an open-heart surgery. That year, it was Kai, again.

“That bad, huh?”

“Well, I mean,” Sehun said, rolling the past week’s events through his mind, “if we look at the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t as bad as when Jongin and Soojung were first linked to each other. Now, it’s more of trying to soften what was already a blow to the public in a nice way.”

“Fair,” she said. “When the news broke, I didn’t even think people would be upset, honestly.”

“Someone always is. I think we’re all pretty good at handling it at this point, anyway.”

She watched Sehun take a leisurely bite of bacon and eggs, an image of peace and tranquility, looking way too relaxed for an idol whose best friend and group member was embroiled in Dispatch’s trademark scandal of the year.

“How’s he taking it?” Irene asked. “Jongin?”

“He’s fine,” Sehun said, between mouthfuls. “He’s been through this song and dance more times than I can count. It’s probably second skin to him. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he set the scandal on himself.”

Irene raised a questioning brow at her husband. “What do you mean?”

Sehun looked at her in surprise, like she had been oblivious to the most obvious thing in the world. “Oh come on now, you don’t seriously think Dispatch was saving their beloved annual New Year’s release for Jongin and Soojung, of all people? People already know about them!”

“Then what?” Irene asked. “You think they caught onto someone else?” She saw the flicker of light in his eyes. “You think they caught onto Jaehyun and Seulgi, and then changed their mind.”

She delivered her last line as a sentence, not a question, having read her husband’s mind in a flash of marital telepathy. “Bingo!” he said, clapping his hands. “What, you don’t think so?”

Irene remained unamused. “If they really caught Jaehyun and Seulgi, they wouldn’t let that one go for something they already caught before,” Irene replied astutely. She knew the industry, and what it stood for. “I’m more inclined to just think that they didn’t find anything better this year.”

“Nah,” Sehun said dismissively. “It’s more likely that Jongin sent his personal pictures to Dispatch, and gave them a better story too, judging by how graphic the details were in the article.” Sehun winced, remembering what he had read earlier in the week. “All for someone he hasn’t talked to in years.”

Sehun shook his head. Irene quietly sipped at her juice. She had been a silent spectator, watching from the sidelines for the past ten years. She had been there to see the first spark that illuminated both Kai and Seulgi’s faces when they were trained side by side, all the way until she saw Seulgi’s darkened expression when Kai and Krystal first appeared in their infamous article.

Throughout the years, she had watched them as their exchanges became more brief, as their words became more soulless. Even as she married Sehun and unwittingly provided more opportunities for their paths to cross, Kai had seemed more intent on pretending Seulgi didn’t exist. When Seulgi had her back turned, he would keep his eyes on her, gazing at her like she was all that was missing from his empty shell of a person. A force of habit, some would say, but Irene viewed it as a matter of pride. Quiet, childish pride.   

“What a stupid cuck. Such a roundabout way to love someone,” Sehun commented. Irene had to agree, but she also wasn’t about to bring up a conversation that would get them nowhere.

She put on a smile, using a napkin to wipe the bits of grease from Sehun’s lips. “So, you think you’re a better lover, then?”

“Of course,” Sehun said, shooting her a flirtatious grin and kissing the back of her palm.

For a change, she gave him the last word, let the conversation close itself, and maneuvered his attention back to their children and their antics. She watched him slip back into oblivious contentment, smiling to herself. Men, she thought, you all know nothing.

But to Irene, Seulgi wasn’t short of her own problems.

Her eyes trailed over her groupmate, watching Seulgi smile blithely at the kids running around the playground. “Sungwoo and Eunjoo have grown so much,” Seulgi remarked.

“I would hope not,” Irene chuckled. “I’d like to keep them as my babies for a while longer.”

Seulgi laughed. “Amazing, isn’t it? Seems like only yesterday you were like a mom to us. Now you and Seungwan have gone and became moms to your own children.”

Irene observed the soft nostalgia on Seulgi’s face fade into dolefulness, like she had remembered something sad in the process of recollecting on the past. Even without all the whispers Irene had heard through the grapevine, she knew that Seulgi wasn’t quite alright.  

Irene tucked her gloved hands into her pockets, keeping them from the cold. She turned her gaze back to Seulgi. “So,” she asked, taking a slow breath, “I heard you ended things with Jaehyun.”

Seulgi didn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

“When?”

“In Paris.”

Irene’s brows met in the middle. Their concert in Paris was a good two weeks before Kai’s scandal had hit the news. “Wasn’t that a bit hasty of you?” Irene remarked. “You guys could’ve held out. It didn’t even turn out to be you.”

A soft chuckle slipped from Seulgi’s lips, rising from a very bitter place within. “Until when?” she asked rhetorically. “One year, two years, three years – how long do we want to be about the bush? It’s not us now, but it’ll be us at some point. Better now, before it becomes too difficult to end.”

A small smile crossed Irene’s face. In the years she had known Seulgi, she had always been a devil with the details. Whether it was executing a dance, composing a song, or meticulously planning every little facet of her life, she acted like she knew her future. Better yet, like she could engineer her future.

Some called her wise, some called her calculating, but Irene knew she was merely doing all she knew how to do. She had spent more years in the company than she had spent outside of it, more years internalizing rules than realizing that they were her golden handcuffs. At some point, she probably brainwashed herself to think it was her own choice. To Irene, Seulgi was barely her own person.  

“If you truly thought that way, then you shouldn’t have dated him to begin with,” Irene said curtly. Seulgi’s eyelids shot up. “You had the end in mind. You knew that you didn’t want to face the heat. So, you were just toying with his feelings.”

“Wha– I– Joohyun!”

“Of course,” Irene continued, with a glimmer in her eyes, “I never said that was wrong.” She turned to Seulgi. “I just think that you never intended to do so. You never knew what you wanted.”

Seulgi’s mouth was half-open, at a loss for words. To an extent, Irene was right. She didn’t think too much when she agreed to dating Jaehyun. Probably swept away by his dimples and his soft eyes. Even when she quickly realized how thoughtless she was, she chose to sweep it under the rug until the time came to pull the