I miss you, please believe

We will meet again

I miss you, until the limits of the sky

I will search for you

Please never let go of this hand

“The food was excellent!” Yoohyeon insisted a bit too forcefully, her voice a tad too high. 

“Yeah... It was really good tonight — as always, mom.” Her brother chimed in quickly no doubt hoping to smooth over the awkwardness. His eyes were intently trained on his plate. 

She internally facepalmed. This was only her first full day back… Could she really take another week of this? Staring down at her mostly empty plate she realized that she’d eaten rather more than usual, probably due how little she’d spoken. It was crazy to think that the few words she’d contributed had still managed to send the evening sideways.

She wasn’t as good as Minji at hiding her thoughts away, and nowhere near as confident as Bora, who had little need to hide anything. Minji could be disconcertingly still, give nothing away if she didn’t want to. Bora on the other hand couldn’t mask her feelings either, but frankly she never seemed to care what most people thought, so it didn’t matter much anyway. Despite her best efforts, Yoohyeon’s expressions tended to communicate just as much as her words, even when she desperately wished otherwise. 

“Yes. Well.” Yoohyeon’s father stood up, initiating the silent cue that dinner was over and that everyone else could stand, or rather could finally go free. “I’ll be in the living room.” He shuffled off, probably to watch a rerun of Great Escape or something like that.

The other three cleared the dishes and then Yoohyeon and her mother got to work washing. 

“I’m glad to finally have some help around here again.” Yoohyeon’s mother smiled encouragingly. “And Pie has missed you so much!”

“Hyunwoo doesn’t help?” Yoohyeon soured a little at the thought. She didn’t used to think much of what chores she was given. Cleaning, cooking, laundry, when she was younger they almost seemed like something special — something only she and her mom could do. However, in her early teen years she’d balked at the uneven distribution, seeing as Hyunwoo only ever had to fold his clothes and take out the trash. After a tantrum her father had taken her aside and told her that there were things men just didn’t do well, and that’s why they needed capable women. Yoohyeon knew better than to roll her eyes, but her consternation was palpable. 

Luckily, before she could really cause much friction at home she moved out to pursue her dream of being an idol. The trainees she met were from all over the country and her little, once catholic-school-centered social bubble grew exponentially. Her peers had fathers who cooked, brothers that cleaned, or mothers who worked full time. They were mostly non-denominational, but there were Christians, Bhuddists, and even Confucianists among their number. None of them seemed anywhere near as surprised as Yoohyeon at the diversity of experience, and she had been so embarrassed at the thought of admitting otherwise that she simply lied and rattled off something about how her brother specifically hated cleaning the bathroom even though he’d never been made to do such a thing in his life. 

“He does a little.” Her mother smiled. “You know how teenagers are. Nobody really wants to do chores.”

“Yeah.” Yoohyeon shrugged noncommittally and continued scrubbing.  

After the washing up was done, Yoohyeon retreated to her room. Her father and mother were watching tv, her brother was probably pretending to study while playing games, and she could have joined either activity just as she would have done years ago, but she didn’t really feel in the right mood to play nice tonight.

Throwing herself back onto her bed, she thought about what had set the whole meal off on the wrong foot — when she had forgotten some of the words to grace and hadn’t covered it very smoothly. The implications were heavy, and the fact that nobody said anything, only exchanging furtive looks, made it even worse. Truth be told, she probably hadn’t said grace before a meal in at least a year. As far back as she could remember, she did it mostly because everyone around her did it, and when her group mates simply tucked in straight away after food was set in front of them, the habit faded. 

So no. She didn’t remember the prayer word for word. More came back to her through muscle memory than she thought would — but it wasn’t enough, and now her whole family knew that she didn’t say grace before dinner when she was away. Which was all the time. Great. 

Following that train-wreck of an opening, talk at the table seemed to drag, the whole family was trying to push the evening along like molasses through a straw. After briefly inquiring about her brother’s school and activities, conversation drifted to current events, goings on within their church, and to her personal life. Yoohyeon could tell that her father and mother were probing, hoping to find out things like what church she went to in Seoul so they could ask their friends if they knew whether it was any good and cyber-stalk the pastors. She of course had no answer for them because she hadn’t really bothered to find one. 

Early on she made the excuse that she didn’t have the time. She was so busy practicing, training, and getting her image right that she couldn’t clear her schedule for something like that, plus it would have to be close to the dorm since she relied on public transportation… All those were believable lies she told herself — lies that could have been perfectly valid for others. Not for Yoohyeon however, at least not after the first few months. No, at the end of the day, if she’d really wanted to she could have done it. But obviously, seeing how things had turned out, she hadn’t, so she let the mission slip away, and made herself feel less guilty by saying she had no time. 

She spent the rest of the evening dodging thinly veiled attempts at squeezing information out of her, each subsequent deflection increasing her parents’ suspicions. Did any of her other members attend services regularly? Did her company respect her beliefs by providing enough free time to go? Were there any young men she had her eye on at the company or in the city? A boy she’d been friends with in elementary school was now doing something successful, and oh, musn’t his parents be so happy? They’d surely give Yoohyeon his number, and she was very pretty so she’d surely catch his eye. Conspicuously absent were any questions about her actual work. 

It was strange. On one hand her parents had bought every album and single Dreamcatcher had released, all lined up neatly on a shelf in their living room. In that respect they must have been proud of her. On the other hand they rarely said anything to that effect, or much of anything about her music at all. 

She looked around her room. Everything was the same — in its place. Her little blue lamp was perched on her bedside table. Her black swivel desk chair that she’d spent so many long hours studying in hadn’t been rotated a single degree. Her frumpy grandma bedding had conspicuously been washed before her arrival since it smelled fresh, but the pillows had been replaced with frightening accuracy to how she had left them. Above her desk, her sad excuse for a cork board was still adorned with all the photos that had been there for years, nothing had fallen off.

Not one thing was an inch from where she’d left it. Her parents hadn’t changed much, her brother had grown some, but was his usual observant if reserved self. She really thought hard. If everything seemed pretty much as she remembered, why did she feel so disoriented? In her own room, in her own home, on the street she’d grown up playing on, she felt — out of sync? All the things, all the people here were in lock step with each other. They seemed to synergize effortlessly, being together for the length of time she’d been away tended to do that. But she had been away. She’d been away and had fallen out of phase, no longer vibrating at quite the same frequency as the things and people around her. Now in close proximity, every deviation from the group felt like a canyon. She felt lonely.  

Goddamn. 

Yoohyeon sat up. She shouldn’t be this depressed during her time off. Leaning forward, she buried her face in her hands and let out a long groan. Sometimes she’d pull herself out of her thoughts and tell herself, ‘this isn’t helping, stop throwing yourself a pity party’. The problem with that was it only made her feel worse about feeling bad in the first place. Why couldn’t she just be happy? Why was it so hard? 

A knock on her door roused her from her thoughts. 

“Yeah?” Yoohyeon called out with a bit of exhaustion coloring her voice.

Hyunwoo poked his head in. “Can I come in?”

“Uh, sure.”

At the invitation Hyunwoo closed the door behind him and sat down at her desk. “Sorry about dinner.” His hands fidgeted but other than that he seemed calm. “I know it was really…”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s all good.” Well, it wasn’t all good but it wasn’t all bad either. The more time she put between herself and dinner the more she felt the suffocating pressure fade into something duller.

“If it helps any, they've kinda been doing the same stuff to me too. The prying and all.” 

“Are they trying to set you up?” Yoohyeon raised one eyebrow in challenge.

“Uh… not quite.” His eyes glanced around the room. “Cause I’ve got a girlfriend now, but she isn’t really religious, so they’re… Well. You know.”

“Yeah.” Yoohyeon did know. Their parents rarely if ever voiced their disapproval plainly. It was always passive aggressive… a subtle comment here, a reproachful glance there. “Wait.” Yoohyeon did a double take mentally. “You’ve got a girlfriend now?” It made sense — kinda. He was a senior in high school, and it would have been stranger for him to have not dated at all. Still, the thought of her little brother having a real girlfriend was somehow surprising. 

“Yeah, so with that bombshell and you home now I think mom and dad have just been hit with too much…”

“Makes sense.” Yoohyeon was now sitting cross legged on her bed playing with the hem of her sock. She looked at Hyunwoo with a mischievous smirk. “But a girlfriend, eh?”

Hyunwoo blushed a bit. “She asked me out a couple months back and we kind of made it official a week ago.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. “But enough about me. Do you remember Choi Hayoon?” 

“I mean, of course. We were kind of friends after all.” They hadn’t been close, but they circulated in friend groups that had a couple people in common, so sometimes they found each other at parties or at school events they were forced to attend. She was nice and had an older sister. All around pretty average. 

“I don’t know if you’ve seen it on Instagram or Kakao, but she’s engaged.”

“She’s what?” Yoohyeon had heard him perfectly well, but for some reason her brain just couldn’t properly process it. “What the fu… heck?” She rooted around in her brain for a second or two, trying to recall everything she knew about this girl from what time they’d spent together. “She’s literally only half a year older than me! At most!”
 

“Yeah.” Hyunwoo spun around a little and leaned an arm on the desk. “My friends say that they heard her parents had some connections and set her up with some guy who's gonna graduate from uni with a future in some corporate group or whatever. None of them think it’s normal, but mom and dad heard about it and since that’s kind of the age everyone in their generation married, they're worried we’re falling behind now.” 

Yoohyeon pinched the bridge of her nose. “They went from ‘no dating’ to ‘get married now’ in the span of like a year.” It wasn’t as if they’d been expressly forbidden from dating, but with the number of times their parents had told them how important their studies were, and how distractions were bad and could wait until later… the message was clear. “I mean. They know that my job would never allow something like that, even if I wanted to, right? Which I do not. Just to be clear.”

“Yeah, I told them not to try pawning Doyun off on you, but I guess they didn’t listen. Pretty sure he’s already seeing someone anyway.” Hyunwoo looked apologetic, no doubt he really had tried — albeit in his own reserved way — to spare Yoohyeon.

“Do you think they’re gonna be like this for the rest of  the week? ‘Cause honestly, it’s not gonna make me suddenly start going back to church, or ruin my career by getting a boyfriend.”

“They’ll probably poke around the problem, but I don’t think they’ll be this bad the whole time.” With that Hyunwoo stood up, pushing the chair out with his legs. “Well. I just wanted to let you know what was up with them. At least you get to go back to Seoul soon. I’ve got to wait until I leave for uni.” He made a face like he’d just found a bug in his lunch, and quietly exited the room, leaving Yoohyeon to mull over the new information. 

An estranged friend was getting married. At the ripe old age of 21. Or maybe 22, or maybe 23… no telling how long they’d extend the engagement. Yooheyon couldn’t believe it. In her mind this girl was still the clumsy, forget her homework at home, skip cram school, bubbly, friendly, mess that she had been when they were 16.

Half out of nostalgia, half out of pure compulsion Yoohyeon grabbed her phone. She made a point not to have personal social media to avoid leaking spoilers, receiving harassment, and contradicting the group’s main accounts, but she did have a private instagram account under a false name which only her closest family and friends had access to. After a quick search she found Hayoon, but her account was also private. Damn. Asking to follow was in no way an option so she continued her sleuthing. Maybe a family member or a friend with a public account had documented something… 

She went through connections, cross referenced searches, even tried to look up family members on Naver. Fifteen minutes ticked by like seconds, she was so absorbed in her little mission. Eventually after half an hour or more she began to feel like she wasn’t getting anywhere particularly quickly. A few associated accounts had been public, but none made any mention of an engagement. Going back to the main page she scrolled idly down her feed. A fluffy white pomeranian flew by. Yoohyeon scrolled back. The video played and Cherry, who had her own account, meticulously curated by Minji’s mother, began prancing around on her screen.

The sheer cuteness brought a smile to Yoohyeon’s face. She watched, entranced, as Cherry barked, well, more like yipped, at someone off camera whose hand could just barely be seen dangling a little treat in the air. Cherry jumped, missed, and wiggled in frustration, all while a woman laughed in the background. Ah, seeing Cherry made her want to go look for Pie. She almost actually got up, but on the first attempt she flopped back down and decided she was too lazy to get up just yet. She still had the rest of the evening, and petting Pie right after she’d eaten wasn’t that great anyway. 

Instead, she continued looking through all the pictures of Cherry that she’d missed. A very tasteful photo shoot with a flower by her ear was particularly impressive considering the dog almost constantly spazzed or twitched or shook in some manner. Another album portrayed Cherry with a little bandana tied loosely around her neck, and even had a behind the scenes video of the fluffy cotton ball attempting to scratch the garment off. 

Occasionally she’d see a hand holding a toy, or a treat, or holding Cherry herself, but never with a face. She assumed it was Minji’s mother, since the woman was borderline obsessed with maintaining the account from Minji’s description. Sometimes there was nail polish, sometimes there wasn’t. The sleeves changed regularly but the jewelry stayed the same. A ring on the ring finger and a thin silver bracelet on the opposite wrist. 

Suddenly a post with very few likes, no cap