07

city of love

There they were, back again. Blinding lights on a massive stage. Clear, melodic voices belting out the chorus of “Hope” with all the emotion in their vocal chords. An ocean of lights, faces and anticipation. Being at the heart of an SMTOWN concert would never get old.

They stood ten meters apart, separated by throngs of people walking around, the watching lenses of the audience, and the unyielding weight of their careers. To the world, they were perhaps distracted by the confetti, exhausted from the four-hour performance, daydreaming into space. In the annals of online history, Jeong Jaehyun and Kang Seulgi were strangers who had never so much as spoken to each other.

So, they remained rooted in their places, deflecting their gazes to everything else but each other. Sometime in the middle, when no one was watching, or at least, when no one knew what they were watching, their eyes met, sharing an uninhibited nanosecond of a glance. She tilted her head, and the corner of his lips upturned to a slight smile.

They blinked, and their time was up. It all dissipated to the cold night air, leaving no traces of all the feelings, affections, moments that once wanted to exist.

He had somehow found his way to her, clambering onto the empty velvet seats at the crowded post-concert party, eyes gleaming with a flicker of something that felt like déjà vu.  

“How does someone, whose job is to be in the spotlight, enjoy being so far from the action?” he asked, a grin curled along his mouth.

She cast her gaze at the rest of the venue. Half of his groupmates were engaged in an intense game of tequila-pong, Heechul and Taeyeon were letting out their rare tone-deaf voices to the words on the karaoke machine, Wendy and Irene were trying to keep the kids as far away as possible, and the boys had somehow gotten Sehun under a vodka bottle, counting the number of seconds he could stay under it. Seulgi had never been the life of the party, but everyone had an Achilles’ heel of some sort, and that perhaps was hers.

“Well, you’re here too,” Seulgi pointed out.

“Touché,” Jaehyun chuckled, clinking his glass against hers.

Seulgi took a sip of the contents, feeling the liquid burn its way down , pooling warmth at the pit of her stomach. They hadn’t spoken for more than a week, save for a few perfunctory messages about the weather and if the other was eating and sleeping well. If it was even possible to eat and sleep well in a country twelve hours from home, in the middle of the biggest concert of the season, and being weeks away from online chaos breaking loose.

He slipped his hand into hers. “Hey,” he said, turning to her, his eyes soft and wistful, “let’s get out of here?”

If he thought she would like his idea of playing hooky, running through the City of Love in the dead of the night, then he couldn’t be more of a prophet.

Paris was as beautiful as she remembered, more breathtakingly so with the stars hanging in the night sky, soft lights reflecting on the waters of the Seine, and their feet pattering against the cobbled walkways. Everywhere they ran, they seemed to see the Eiffel Tower, with its lighted tip piercing the sky. When they stopped at the Tino Rossi, pairs of tango dancers moved to a lively tune, giving a performance to a crowd drinking red wine directly from the bottles.  

“Do you want to try?” Jaehyun asked, nodding towards the dancers. Perhaps it was leftover inebriation from the party, but there was a tone of dauntlessness in his voice.

“I don’t know how to dance the tango,” she replied, despite being slightly tempted by the thought.

His eyes glittered. “Neither do I.”

Grinning widely, he pulled her to a spot as far and as close to the dancers as they could be. He placed her hands on his shoulders and his on her waist, and they both swayed mirthfully to the music, trying not trip over their shoes, laughing and smiling and gazing deeply into each other’s eyes like they were the only ones there, like there was nothing to worry about, like the rest of the world ceased to matter. And perhaps, that was the only place that they could act like it didn’t.

They chose to stop at a seemingly secluded bench on the Pont des Arts, hovering over the Seine and with the sight of the glimmering Eiffel Tower. He had deftly managed to nab them some sandwiches from a closing eatery that they had passed by – “Je suis en rendez-vous avec ma copine,” he had spluttered, summoning all the power of his limited middle-school French. Seulgi knew that there was probably a word or two out of place, but Jeong Jaehyun didn’t need to say anything right to get what he wanted from a person he looked in the eye.

Seulgi leaned her back against the metal of the seat, in a breath of air, reveling in the beauty that was Paris at night.

Jaehyun slung an arm over her shoulders. “Does this count as a good first date?”

She arched her brows, startled. As far as she remembered, they had been seeing each other for a good three months. “Is this our first date?”

“Unle