in my dreams, we’re growing older,

but i wake up to the truth

that i’m scared we’re gonna lose,

tell me it won’t happen.

—

On the morning of one particularly normal, boring day where she was free from all schedules, Yongsun found herself in a small café rather than inside the comfort of her own house. This shouldn’t be surprising at all, if not for the fact that this was not an entirely new café that was all the rage and trend in social media platforms where people are swarming to visit. She had already been here before, for numerous of times even, probably way too many times for her to even keep count of it. It shouldn’t be surprising at all because it was the last café that they had been to together on the last day of their pretend marriage.

It wasn’t that drinks were exceptionally the greatest of all, or were the snacks so tasty that she’d make a frequent visit to it. It was the memories that kept her going: whether to reminisce or to dwell in her own misery, she didn’t quite know or care enough to figure it out. She just knew she wanted to go there, got herself a warm cup of tea, and then took a silent walk along those familiar gardens once more. And if she was feeling up to it, she might even trudged down the roads to where their previous home was, standing from across the streets and watched as the house welcomed different memories of a different owner. She wondered if house ever had a feeling of its own, would it feel weird to witness different memories made by somebody else that was not its previous owner?

Each year on their pretend wedding anniversary, she would make it a point for herself to visit the house. She would watched each year as the lives of two strangers, the new owner of their house, unfolded in the very place that had once been their common grounds. She would watched as they shared the same excitement and nerves of first moving in together, watched as the man dropped to his knee with a ring in his hand. She wondered briefly then if the woman had felt as she had in that situation; she didn’t realise, however, she’d find herself wiping away at the tears that trailed down her cheeks enviously at the beautiful sight. 

Over the years, she would watched even as the couple welcomed their first child together, the number of two had increased to three, and the house that was probably a decent size for two people once were now probably a little too small for three, and she wondered if they would considered leaving their fond memories here and starting a new ones at another place. This year, she had been pleasantly surprised to find that they were still there: in fact, they had seemed as though they were preparing to go on a family picnic. The husband was loading up their picnic baskets and mats into the back of his car, and the woman was carefully setting their little daughter in her baby seat. Such a normal occurrence for a normal family on daily basis, yet Yongsun felt her own heart aching painfully at the sight. 

The hollow that had long been sculpted in her heart was no longer an unfamiliar feeling, but she was a dreamer, and she longed for what they had: a family of her own or how they could all just simply took a break and escaped from the hectic life in the constant spotlights into the woods just by themselves. Away from the persistent clicking of cameras and blinding flashes, away from the medias that were out to hunt for every of their moves, and to just simply recoiled into the embrace of her own warm little family.

But sometimes dreams weren’t meant to all come true, and she had learned to accept it now because for all the dreams that she had, this was the dream that she knew to be impossible. So Yongsun could only smiled bitterly to herself as she watched the small family that she was in no way acquainted with settled into their car and happily chased after her dream in her stead, and wished upon them for a journey filled with the happiness that she would perhaps never get to experience. But for now, she was contented to leave the place and trudged back to her reality with the stem of familiar marigold someone had left abandoned on the bench at where she was standing. 

A polite call for her attention snapped her out of her reverie, Yongsun looked up and smiled at the female cashier who kindly handed her a warm cup of tea, and a box of churros for takeouts. Normally, she would have left and returned back home, but something about that day’s quiet morning made her wanted to sit down in one of the most seclusive seat in the corner of the café for a little longer.

She stared out of the window and took in the empty streets. It was early in the morning, and not many people had started their day yet seeing as it was the weekend. She still remembered vividly that day when he had came back from his supposed visit to the restroom with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, his wavering tone and teary eyes when he had told her she could keep it for as long as she wanted to. She wondered if he knew she still had them safely display in her bedroom because she didn’t have the heart to throw them away. She wondered if he even cared enough to remember that he was the one who had given it to her. 

It felt silly for some reasons, Yongsun thought, to wonder if he cared as much as she did because all the signs were too obvious: she had been ghosted again and again, despite having access to each other’s contact information. She had extended an invitation to him in a public livestream and he never responded to it. That was likely to happen, she’d resonated mostly to herself, after all he might not have kept up with the Internet. But then, she had also texted and called him on several occasions. Unless he also had not kept up with his phones and perhaps went off into hibernation under some rocks, she could not understand why he would not pick up her calls or respond to her texts. Or had she been the only one who was still lingering after all these years?

She sighed and promptly reverted her gaze back to the cup of tea sitting in front of her. Her body tensed up immediately when she caught sight of a man who had just sat down in the corner of another table across from her, in his black hoodie and laptop, and a cup of steaming coffee by his side. At a glance, she was convinced it was him, but when she focused harder and looked a little closer, it turned out to be somebody who just looked like him. 

But it wasn’t just any random somebody.

It was his brother. And if her memory did not entirely fail her, Yongsun recognised him as Eric’s youngest brother, Brian, whom she had talked to once on the phone and met briefly once behind the stage at Kcon many years ago.

She froze, contemplating whether or not she should went up to him and asked if Eric was even still alive, or why was he not responding to any of her attempts at a normal conversation, or whether she should just pretend she didn’t see him and quietly slipped out of the café.

But she was not the Yongsun of the past anymore, and if she had decided on being adamant on making this work again, she would go through with it all the ways until the end. 

So she took a deep breath, and began to approach him. “Hello,” she said almost tentatively; watched as the younger man looked up confusedly. She could tell exactly the moment he recognised her when his eyes went wide and his lips formed an exact circular shape, before he attempted to appear dignified once more. “You’re Brian, right? Eric Nam oppa’s younger brother?”

The younger man nodded slowly, “Yes,” he paused and scratched his head awkwardly. “Uh, please have a seat.”

She was pleasantly surprised to know that he now understood Korean, and spoke a decent Korean. With a small smile, Yongsun slid into the seat across from him and watched as he awkwardly put away his laptop and re-arranged his cup of coffee. She let her gazes wandered to the counter, thinking perhaps Eric might have came along as well and was genuinely disappointed to find the café empty with just the two of them sitting across from one another.

“How have you been?” Brian was the first to ask; she had to refrain herself from mentioning how similar their voices actually sounded.

“I’m good, thank you,” she smiled. Is your brother still alive, she shunned her thought aside and mentally reprimanded herself. “What about you? It’s been so long since we last met.”

A bashful smile spread on Brian’s face. “I’ve been well, thank you. I didn’t actually expect you to still remember me. The last time we ever talked was years ago when Eric— uh, you guys called me on my birthday.”

Yongsun didn’t expect to appear so flustered at hearing his name, but she could tell his younger brother could noticed from the looks on his face. She smiled embarrassingly, not exactly knowing what to say so she reached for her cup of tea for a big sip to calm herself down, hoping belatedly that it won’t be scorching hot. The last thing she’d wanted for today was to go back home with a broken heart and a broken tastebud. 

“So… is he doing alright as well?” She asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as she could, but she guessed her expression might have given herself away anyways when she saw the almost sympathetic smile on Brian’s face. Honestly, could she really blame the younger man though? She had seen Eric only a couple of weeks ago, and she was acting like he was dying because she couldn’t reached him. 

But Brian gave her a small shrug, “He’s…” the younger man trailed off for a second, weighing on his options on how to best phrased this older brother’s life as of currently. “He’s getting by, I guess. Constantly keeping himself busy, on his phone all times everyday, overworking himself as usual. But I’m sure you already knew that, you’ve probably seen how bad his dark circles were despite how thick he tried to conceal them with his makeup every times.”

Oh, Yongsun’s heart sank at the casual remark in Brian’s response, her auditory senses automatically tuning out the rest of his sentence. These entire times, had he been deliberately ignoring her texts or calls then?

She wasn’t sure why she could feel the sudden prick of tears behind her eyes, or the sudden surge of anger swelling inside her chest. Did she even have the rights to get mad at him? After all, it was not like they had anything going on in the first place; he had the rights to do whatever he wanted to, and that included keeping or not keeping in touch with her. But the very thought only seemed to traitorously intensified the aching in her chest.

When she stayed absolutely silent without uttering back a response for a little too long, Brian studied her face and asked her out of genuine concern, “Are you okay?”

Yongsun snapped back out of her reverie and forced a small nod. “Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about something.”

“About why he’s not keeping in touch with you?”

The frankness in the younger man’s question itself took her by surprise that she could do nothing but blinked up at him. Brian gave her another sympathetic smile, and she wished he would stop doing that. Rather than taking pity on her, she wished he’d just let her knew why Eric was constantly doing this: avoiding her, running away from her, refusing to breath the same air as her if he could. 

She hadn’t been entirely oblivious. She had been paying attention to what he was doing, including all his podcasts and many times, she found herself disappointed when he had the opportunity to mention her, or even just her songs in his podcast but he chose not to. Whenever the opportunity arose, he’d either avoided it, or promptly talked about her member rather than her. Yongsun wasn’t sure which one hurt her more. By no means, she was never jealous of Hyejin or Wheein or even Byul, but she couldn’t the deny the disappointment she had felt when he had no problems talking to the world about them, but not about her.

“Look, hyungsu-nim,” Brian said, and Yongsun mentally cursed herself for feeling her heart skipped a bit at the familiar term. “I won’t claim to know exactly why he’s doing this, but I just want to say that I’m one of the people who know Eric better than anyone else along with Eddie. I know the exact moment when he had fallen for you all those years ago. I won’t say when exactly, but I don’t believe he has ever truly fell out of love with you. If anything, he probably cares about you so much, that’s why he refuses to do anything that he thinks would only caused you any further harm than it already had.”

Her breath hitched; momentarily caught in the whirl-storm of incomprehensible thoughts inside her head. She had thought all these years perhaps she had been the only one lingering in memories that could do nothing but brought her more sorrow as each year passed. All these times she had thought she was longing for an impossible; that he had moved on and wanted nothing to do with her anymore while she was still battling a lonely battle against the world. 

But Yongsun was no longer sure if whatever Brian had just said had just broken the last remaining modicum of her aching heart, or had he really just opened up a rabbit hole that sent her down five feet deeper into the state of half relieve, and a quarter of agitation and perplexity all simultaneously in one sitting.

“He thinks by cutting me off, he’d be protecting me from further harm?” She couldn’t help the exasperation in her voice, or had she intended to let the anger slipped across her tone. 

But Brian had only chuckled humourlessly. “Yeah, well, the guy’s head works in a strange way sometimes. I know he’s my brother but,” he shrugged slightly, “look, I’d say, if you really want to know what’s in his head exactly, pay attention to the lyrics of songs he had put out so far. I’m not trying to plug his musics or anything, that’s Eddie’s job honestly, but it’s common knowledges among us that his musics are probably the only outlet he’s even been genuinely honest in.”

Now that rabbit hole she had fallen into was beginning to spin ridiculously fast, she almost felt like she was instead on that rollercoaster in Dubai once again. 

The younger man’s voice broke her out of her trance once again when he said, “Oh wow, that’s a really pretty stem of marigold you’ve got. Did you get it from one of the flower shops around here?”

Yongsun averted her gaze to the stem of radiant marigold safely tucked in her tote bag that she had left idled to her side. She had completely forgotten about it until he had pointed it out. “No, I found it on a bench somewhere around here actually… someone must have left it there.” 

She didn’t mention, however, the mystery in finding that same beautiful radiant stem of marigold every single year on the same bench across from their former house. It was one of the many things she would looked forward to seeing the most annually: that one deserted stem of marigold had intrigued her since the very first time she had found it a couple of years ago. It was always there by itself in that same exact spot; no note, no other companion, just as if it was waiting for something or someone.

She wasn’t sure why, or how, but for all the solitude she had felt all these years, Yongsun would never wanted to wish that upon anyone else, let alone a flower. So each year, she’d find herself leaving her once happiest place with an alluring homeless stem of marigold, hoping to at least provide a home for it. 

“Marigolds always remind me of Eric. He’d always has this habit of bringing a bouquet of marigolds into our Dive Studio’s office every year. Nobody really knows why, but we weren’t really complaining either because they brightened up the office and they smelled nice. The one you have there looked far better than any he had ever brought into the office though.” 

Yongsun scowled lightly, the dots seemingly connecting themselves in her head but she held onto it just in case she was being delirious from being hit with the sudden whirl-storm of emotions earlier. It couldn’t be…

“Every year?” she asked tentatively. 

Brian nodded while taking a sip of his coffee, “Every year. Usually around this time of the year too actually.”

The dots were too apparent for her to even deny it anymore now, so she just sat there, slightly gobsmacked at the unexpected discovery of the mystery that had been intriguing her for years. 

The pairs of them stayed quiet afterwards, quietly sipping on their own respective beverages, each of them lost in their own respective thoughts despite looking out the same window onto the street of that one cold winter morning. While Brian was admiring the sight of people slowly filling the earlier empty street, Yongsun was lost in her train of thoughts. She couldn’t decide if approaching Brian had been a good decision on her parts or not, but she took reassurance in the fact that she had at least learned something she hadn’t known about before.

That Eric probably wanted this just as much as she did, but it was that selfless nature of his that he was battling against. He cared too much that he only ended up hurting them both even more instead. 

But there was also another thing she had realised in that moment: she was putting up a fight against the wrong people. It wasn’t the fans she needed to persuaded into normalising the idea of them being together. It was Eric whom she should have been approaching in the first place.