so before it’s really over,

can we have a little faith?

baby, say it ain’t too late,

it’s all that i’m asking.

—

If there was a way, then there was also hope. And if there was hope, ultimately there was also disappointment.

He just didn’t think his hope would crashed and burned this quick. In retrospect, he should have expected it. After all, what good was to come out of playing with fire?

There were certain things in the world that had been blessed to always worked the way it should be, but there were also some situations that, no matter how hard one tried, yielded absolutely no results whatsoever no matter how much anyone would tried.

This was exactly that situation.

No matter how hard they tried, it was pointless. It had gotten to the point where he even questioned himself why did he even try anymore in the first place? In hindsight, it should have been pretty clear to him that he and Yongsun were not meant to be seen breathing in one room together, especially when they’re in Korea. But he had let his guards down that day of the radio show recording, or truthfully speaking, he had been feeling a little courageous from what they had in Atlanta three months ago and had put his guards down for the first time ever. 

Though only to have it backfired like a damn wildfire.

He had seen the way the internet had exploded (not literally but in a sense, Eric thought it almost felt that way) once the radio show was uploaded long enough onto every social platforms. He had encountered countless of nasty tweets furiously claiming either Yongsun had been forced to be nice to him that day so she won’t have to deal with the wrath of his fans, or Eric himself had to force himself to be nice and polite to her that day because he was traumatised by her fans.

The fandoms were at it back and forth, chastising one another on matters that honestly shouldn’t even be debatable in the first place. 

Eric wished they would all just shut up instead.

He was by no means a conflict person at all. If he could avoid one, he would do anything to avoid having a certain situation evolving into an actual conflict… which was how he had ended up finally rejecting her offer to appear on her Youtube channel.

She had called just a few days after the radio show recording, and promptly asked if he was up to film something together with her for her channel. Eric had refused then. Needless to say, it hadn’t been the most pleasant conversant they’ve ever had together; and karma seemed to have bit him back in his face for it because he had been going to bed every night since then, constantly being reminded of the dejection he had heard in her voice when she was hanging up their call that day.

It was never his intention to hurt her in any sort of way, and that included avoiding anything that he knew would potentially harmed her even further. So the best way to go was probably to never have to be seen in the same room with her for any show at all again… right?

Then, why the hell was Yongsun now sitting on one of the couches in Dive Studios’ recording studio, recording for a podcast that fortunately enough was not hosted by him but was still in a way related to him?

Eric had stared at Brian in disbelief then, wondering what the hell his younger brother was thinking. Was he doing this on purpose, or was he that oblivious to the hate they were literally still receiving to this day on almost every existing social media platforms?

“Hey, in my defence, I did asked her first and she agreed to it on her own accord! I didn’t force her to be here!” Brian had tried to defend himself, eyes widening in pure panic at the incredulous look on his older brother’s face. “Also you’re not even hosting Mindset, she’s just appearing by herself. It can’t be that bad.”

Eric thought he might have had a .

“It can’t be that bad?” Eric repeated his brother’s words in exasperation. “It is that bad, Brian! Can’t you see what’s going on right now? The last thing we need now is to add more fuel to the fire. What were you thinking? Honestly, had you even think at all?”

He didn’t remember ever being this harsh on Brian before. In hindsight, Eric knew he would have to apologise to the younger man for what he had just said, but the apprehension inside him had gotten the better of his head, sending him down a spiral he didn’t think was possible to escape from. 

It wasn’t just himself he was worried about, but it was also her he was truly concerned about. In contrary to the furious claims of what her fans had said on the internet, he hadn’t been entirely blind to the situation that had conspired in the past. He had known about the hate his fans had been directing towards her, he had seen with his own eyes the evidences of his own fans attacking not only her, but going as far as to attack even her sister. Every single times, Eric felt more hopeless than he thought was possible: there was nothing he could do to stop it even when he desperately wanted to, and he didn’t think he had the face to even personally apologise to her or her sister for the matter. 

He was so lost in his own thought that he had almost missed the remorse in Brian’s voice when he said, “I know you probably won’t believe me, but I really did asked her since back when we were in Atlanta. We just got around to filming today… I really didn’t have any other motive at all.”

“Do you not want me to be here?” 

Eric could visibly see the the moment Brian had froze on the spot, or the way his own head snapped out of his reverie and whipped around almost on instinct. His eyes met Yongsun who was standing outside the door of the recording studio she had just been in.

He forced his eyes closed momentarily to recollect himself before he opened them again. In an almost wary tone, he sighed, “You know that’s not what I meant, Sol—”

“Don’t you dare call me Solar-ssi,” she said, anger laced thickly across her voice that made both Eric and Brian flinched simultaneously.

Brian stole a glance between the both of them. His eyes met with one of their main producer’s who had stood frozen in the room as well, unfortunately trapped in a wrong place at the wrong time, not knowing what to do exactly at the scene unfolding in front of them. As if on cue, the two shared an eye contact and began to hurried towards the exit, feeling and knowing very well they needed to give those two some spaces.

“Be honest with me, do you hate me? Is that why you didn’t want to keep in touch, or be seen anywhere with me?” Yongsun asked. The question coming from her felt like a blow to the last modicum of his shattering heart, he genuinely could not believed that out of all the things she’d thought, she’d believed that he’d hate her.

“No! Why would you even think I’d hate you?”

Yongsun threw her hands in the air, as if the exasperation within herself were suddenly all too much at once, “I don’t know, I honestly don’t know what else to think because you keep on doing this. Why do you keep on treating me like dusts?”

“You know I could never hate you. Hell, I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you for years. You literally occupied my brain all the damn times even when I’m trying to write my songs,  you’re just always there in my head and it’s frustrating me out because I can’t do about it! Why else would I kissed you that night in Atlanta if I wasn’t in love with you?”

The people who were making their ways towards the exit immediately paused in their steps, heads turning around almost comically to look at Eric like he had gone mad. In a way, they weren’t entirely wrong: the Eric they knew would rambled about everything from what he encountered to even what happened at his salon, but never about his love life. Any talk about his love life at all, Eric would shut himself out like he couldn’t comprehend the conversation. But to see the man himself raising his voice, admitting to the thoughts he had only spilled into his lyrics, right in front of their very eyes like this… to say he had gone mad would probably be an understatement. 

As if sensing the tension that had settled within the room, Eric sighed and ran his hand through his hairs helplessly. 

“Can you guys please give us some space?” He didn’t turn around to directly address them, nor did he yell at them to leave the room but the two nodded their heads rapidly and rushed outside anyway, not wanting to be caught in the middle of an awkward situation any longer. 

“You said you don’t ever want us to change. That day in the pool, you said you wants things to never change between us even after the show ends. Then, why are you changing, Eric?”

Eric didn’t think he had any remaining balance within his body to stand upright, and if it wasn’t for the severity of the situation or the way she had looked at him with so much agony in her eyes, he thought he would very much just liked to lay down and never had to get back up on his feet for days. 

“Can’t you see how pointless this is? Haven’t you seen how they’re still reacting all because we sat next to each other in one radio show?”

“I don’t care about what they think—”

“But I do care!” He sighed, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides, a sure sign that he was slowly spiralling down, only barely managing to hold himself together. “I hate having to see all those stupid attacks on you or the people who are closed to you, and I hate having to feel so useless that there’s nothing I can do about it! No matter what we do, things are never going to work out. We can’t change their minds, you know  that, Yong.” 

The slip of affectionate nickname he had for her from his mouth did not, however, make her feel any better. “So you’re gonna give up before we even give it a proper try?”

“Well, do you want to live the rest of your life getting cursed out by people for literally everything you do?”

“Then, do you want to live the rest of your life pleasing other people forever?”

They both stared at each other, refusing to back down respectively despite the tears that welled up in their own eyes or the way their chests heaved heavily from the pent-up frustration. He didn’t think this conversation was going anywhere, except perhaps permanently straining their relationship to the point of absolute destruction. However, standing across from him, Yongsun looked as if despite the anger and frustration she was feeling, there was something akin to hope that she wished he would noticed.

“Remember when you told me that day in the pool that you don’t want to be label as the Nation’s Boyfriend; that the pressure of being perfect was a burden you no longer wanted to bear?” Yongsun asked, “If you’re going to live in fear of what people’s reactions would be to everything you do, you’re never going to escape from that Nation’s Boyfriend label of yours. You’re going to ultimately live your life pleasing them, doing exactly what they want you to do, granting them the exact victory that they are able to control you however they like. ”

Eric could not find it in himself to say anything when she had laid everything in plain daylight for him to see this way. He knew she was right, and he knew despite how much he had tried to convince himself that it was her whom he was worried about, he could not deny that underlying terror he had in the back of his mind that all would be condemned if he entirely chose to go against that one public persona he so much claimed to hate. Admittedly, yes he absolutely despised that persona and yes he definitely wanted to get rid of it, but when you had been moulded a certain way for far too long, you had unfortunately grown to depend on it like a crucial lifeline. In a way, despite how much he hated it, it had unfortunately affected him so much that he had became too scared to go against it.

“A few years ago, you were the one who taught me to be strong, to be confident in who I am, and to live unapologetically for myself first and foremost,” Yongsun’s voice was so much more gentle when she spoke again. “I believe somewhere underneath those fears, the Eric Nam who gave me a chance to be who I am today is still there. You just have to start giving yourself a chance like you’d give others. 

“Byul told me once if things are meant to be, it’ll work out on its own. I called absolute nonsense on that, I don’t believe in such things as miracles. If someone truly wants something, they will make an effort to do whatever it takes to get there. I don’t believe in letting things go, and sit around miserably waiting for some non-existing miracles to happen,” she swallowed thickly for a quick moment, then shoved a fairly big rectangular brown paper bag into his hand. “I’m not going to sit around, waiting to collect a hundred marigold stems anymore. I think it’s time you should really start deciding which exact meaning you want these marigolds to mean for us.”

Eric didn’t quite have the time to make sense of everything she had said, or even to respond as Yongsun walked away passed him outside of the studio. He thought he heard her faintly muttering great works today to the Dive’s staffs before she left, but he felt as though his world had collapsed and tumbled down right in front of his very sight to really grasped what was going on around him anymore. 

It wasn’t until he felt a hand on his shoulder, a familiar voice asking him, “Eric, you alright?” that briefly brought him out of his reverie. He looked up at his brother, an exhaustion he hadn’t ever experienced before washed over his entire body. His mind was a racing mess when he uttered warily to the younger man, “Sorry Brian, but can you leave me alone for a moment please?”

Brian nodded mutely, taking another worried glance at his older brother before he ultimately left the room once again. 

Eric finally let the exhaustion within himself surfaced, collapsing down onto the couch unceremoniously as he stared at the paper bag of dead, wilted marigolds inside his hand. 

Over the years, he had left his hope with time and a stem of marigold because he had thought then that time would either healed his broken heart or granted him his deepest desire. He didn’t realise, however, that the hope he had left with the stems of marigold over the years would ultimately came back to him, bringing back not an answer he longed for but a sense of reality that he needed to learn to accept: that hope was a useless thing for ones to hold onto, that the only one who was truly in charge of his happiness was not hope, not some astonishing miracles ones would pray for everyday, but himself.