Chapter 5.

By evening, Jeremy had exhausted himself over the composition.

His notebook was sitting on the stand, worn and frayed after making repeated changes to the song.  He was tapping at random keys with his multi-coloured glitter pen, but his brown eyes were staring at the mobile phone lying on a cushion of the couch.

“She’ll be okay,” he murmured to himself.  “So stop worrying, Jeremy.”

As his thoughts wouldn’t go in another direction, he chose to go for a walk.

And then changed his mind.

He thought that he should really take a break.

But he hadn’t polished the song off yet.

His brain was fried.  It needed a chance to recuperate.

“Baaaaah!”  He ruffled up his hair with both hands.  “I really, really need to see her!”

Suddenly, his phone blasted out a song by Block B, and Jeremy dove on the couch in relief.  He was a bit disappointed when he saw Shin Woo’s name flashing.

“Hyung, bring me over some food.  I’m starving,” said Jeremy, making the most of the call.

“Something happened between Mi Nyeo and Tae Kyung.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened.  “Tell her I’m coming now.”

“She’s not here.  Tae Kyung came back without her and shut himself in his room.”

“That dummy.  What’s he done now?”

“I don’t know.  It’s none of my business.”

“Have you spoken to Mi Nyeo?”

“No.  That is also none of my business.”

Jeremy frowned.  “I don’t get it.  Is this a joke, Hyung?”

“You’re the only one who can make Mi Nyeo smile, and as you’re not too bright, I’d thought I’d give you a very strong hint to go do it.”

Jeremy clenched the phone as if it was Shin Woo’s neck.  “Then get off my phone so that I can call her.”

“If either of them ask, you didn’t hear this from me.  It’s none of-”

“Your business.  So get off my phone!”

Jeremy hung up first and put on his coat before he dialled Mi Nyeo.  He’d sensed that something was wrong, and now he wished he’d acted on his hunch.  There was a reason thoughts of her had been nagging him all day long.

“Yobseo?” answered a deflated Mi Nyeo.  He could hear traffic noise in the background.

“Mi Nyeo-yah.  Where are you?  I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Oh?  Okay.  I’ll be a little while though.”

“I’ll come to you.”

“Ah...I’m not sure where I am.  I got on a bus.  I thought it was your bus but it didn’t go back to my stop, so I’m taking another bus.”

“Please wait for me Mi Nyeo.  I want to catch my bus with you.  I think I really need it.  So...so what is the name of your bus stop?”

There was a long pause at her end before she answered.

The city was busy that night.  People were combining work parties with family Christmas celebrations and shopping.  Jeremy doubted that even his bus would be completely empty.  He’d caught one of the buses going to Myeongdong and kept an eye out for the Intercity bus terminal that Mi Nyeo had wound up at.

It turned out that her stop was packed with people.  Jeremy wished he’d done more than worn sunglasses and a hoodie, but it was too late for that.  He stepped out and hopped up and down on the spot in order to find her.

It wasn’t easy to spot her amongst so many, but he’d been trained to find her in a citywide blackout.  Mi Nyeo had somehow ended up being crushed against one of the advertisements lining the bus shelter.  Her defeated head was leaning back against the graffiti-proof plastic with a shining circle of light illuminating her loose auburn hair.

While he was trying to get to her, she scanned the loiterers with her eyes and found him too.

Her face came to life.  “Jeremy!” she shouted.

“Go Mi Nam!” he shouted back, waving a hand at her.

A strange silence fell over the onlookers as the pair tried to reach each other.  Whispers of ‘Jeremy’, ‘Go Mi Nam’ and ‘ANJell’ made them both stiffen and realise their mistake far too late.  Mi Nyeo let her long hair fall over her face while Jeremy pulled the cords of his hoodie tight.

“I’m really glad that you’re here,” whispered Mi Nyeo when she reached him.

Jeremy lifted his glasses to greet her.  “I wanted to see you badly.  Now walk very, very slowly over to the nearest bus.”

Mi Nyeo peeked around at the curious crowd.  Everyone was looking at her like she was a strange bird in a zoo.

“Walk slowly,” reminded Jeremy.  “We don’t want to confirm anyone’s suspicions by running, and Hyung is going to kill me if we’re in the papers tomorrow.”

Casually, so as not to turn their hushed audience into predators, they crept over to the nearest bus with an open door.  One camera phone flashed at their backs as they climbed up the steps, but nothing more happened.  Jeremy put it down to Mi Nyeo’s long hair throwing them off.

“I’m so glad that you’re a girl,” he said, doing a little ‘escapee dance’ as soon as the doors closed.

Mi Nyeo blushed and led the way to an empty seat.  The bus wasn’t packed, but a few people were clustered at the front.  No one seemed to have noticed what had been going on at the platform.

“Sorry for saying your name out loud,” she said, as Jeremy sat down next to her.  He freed himself from his disguise and gave her a smile.

“Yah.  I did it too,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter because we got away thanks to you.  This bus isn’t a bad substitute for mine either.  What do you think?”

Mi Nyeo let out a long sigh.  “It’s good.  What about you, J-“  She stopped herself before saying his name out loud.  “Oppa.  Are you having trouble writing your song?”

“Op-pa?”  Jeremy’s eyes grew to the size of nectarines.

“Yes.  Even though we are the same age, ‘Oppa’ can be your code name in public.  No one will think it’s strange.”

Jeremy let out a long shuddering sigh.  “When Tae Kyung finds out, he’ll be personally writing out my death certificate...in my blood.”

“Ah.”  At the mention of Tae Kyung, Mi Nyeo looked sad.  She turned to look out of the window so that he couldn’t see her face.

Jeremy reached out to hug her, and stopped himself, slipped an arm over her shoulder, and withdrew it before she could feel it.  He settled on touching her hand, and sighed.  Why couldn’t he just hold her?

“Are you all right, Mi Nyeo?”

“Right now, I’m not okay,” she confessed.  “I need this bus to help me make peace with myself.  What about you?”

“To be honest,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.  “I’ve written a song, but I really wanted to know what you thought of it before I polished it off.  Here.”  He held out one earphone that connected to his phone.  “I recorded the music from the keyboard.”

They sat in silence as they listened to it together.  Mi Nyeo gave him a smile after the middle eight.  “It sounds like a lullaby.”

He nodded.  “I don’t know why.  It just turned out that way.  But it completely changes once I add the worst lyrics ever.  Want to hear?”

Her troubles temporarily forgotten, Mi Nyeo adjusted her position on the seat so that she was facing Jeremy.  They grinned at each other, and Jeremy knew that seeing her like this was what he’d written the song for.

“I wanna make you smile whenever you're sad,” he sang, tugging at the phone in her ear just to .  “Carry you around when your arthritis is bad.  All I wanna do, is grow old with you.”

Dimples appeared in the corners of Mi Nyeo’s already laughing mouth.

“I'll get your medicine when your tummy aches.  Build you a fire if the furnace breaks.  Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you.”

He nudged her shoulder with his, making her blush like the girl she was.

“I'll miss you.  Kiss you.  Give you my coat when you are cold.  Need you.  Feed you.  Even let you hold the remote control.”

“So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink.  Put you to bed when you've had too much to drink.  Oh I could be the one, who grows old with you.  I wanna grow old with you.”

For a while she didn’t say anything.  Her hands went to her open lips as he took his time removing the phone from her ear.  He kept the smile glued to his face while he stopped the music from playing.

“It needs some work, doesn’t it?” he said, looking down at his phone.  “But I don’t think the band will hate it.”

Mi Nyeo sniffed.  “It’s for me.”

“Huh?”  Jeremy gaped at her.

“It feels like it’s been written for me.  All your fans will feel the same way.”

He sighed in relief and disappointment.  “It’s yours.  If you want it.”

“Mine?”

“As a present.  Y-you can share it with Tae Kyung...when you two aren’t...or just play it when you’re feeling down.”

Mi Nyeo looked shell-shocked.  “I can’t accept that.”

“Why not?”  Jeremy felt sick.  The smile had slipped off his face completely.

“Y-you shouldn’t give your songs away so-so freely.  I learned from my parents how precious a song can be.”

He took in her beautiful face, the brown lashes, the traces of pink lipstick on her lips, and in a lungful of air.  “I’m not giving it to you freely.  I’m giving it to you because it’s yours, because I worried about you all day, because I really hate it when you don’t smile.”

He reached out to wipe off a tear that had been rolling down her cheek.  “Take the song.”

She shook her head.  “I already have one from you that I treasure very much.”

He flinched at the memory.  Her past rejection of him still hurt whenever he thought of it.  He had to wait for the sudden ache to pass before he could speak to her.

“I guess this is like déjà vu for you then,” he said in a dull voice.  “You must be sick of me doing this to you all the time.”

“No.  That’s not-”

He pointed to a sign that flashed by the window.  “Forget it.  Look!  Two more stops and we’ll be able to walk home.”

Mi Nyeo looked upset.

“Cheer up.  When we get back, you’ll be able to ask Shin Woo for his advice about Tae Kyung,” he said, giving her hand an affectionate pat.  “He’s good at it...most of the time.  Who knows?  Things might be fixed for you by breakfast tomorrow.  Ah, here’s our stop.”

He got to his feet, and let Mi Nyeo follow at her own pace as he climbed off the bus.  He shivered in the cold night air, and hopped up and down as he waited for her to catch up.  As part of the act, he slapped an arm around her neck and made her walk in zigzags down the pavement.

“Jeremy, stop.”

“Can’t stop.  Too cold.  We’ll get warmer this way.”

“Jeremy, s-top!”  Mi Nyeo slipped out of his grasp and stepped in front of him, bringing him to a sudden halt.  She looked determined to torture him some more over the past, or maybe the song, or even his feelings.

“I want to talk,” she said.

“And I don’t.”

“Jeremy, please let me talk.”

To make his point, Jeremy stuffed his phones in his ears and arrowed down the list of songs on his mobile until he found a really loud one.

Mi Nyeo reached up, and he thought she was going to take the phones off him.  There was a brief struggle before she reached up higher and wrapped her shaking hands around his neck, stopping him in his tracks.  She looked into his eyes, and then against all prior understanding between them, she tilted her head and tickled his mouth with hers.

Jeremy had imagined kissing her a thousand times, but nothing could prepare him for the reality.  Her lips were soft, quivering against him like butterfly wings.  The kiss was innocent, but full of loving caresses.  He closed his eyes against the rest of the world, and let her weave her spell on him for as long as she wanted.

When she finally pulled away, he opened his eyes to drink in her face.  A dimple peeped out of the corner of his mouth when he realised that she was just as dazed as he was.

“When did this happen?” he said, berating himself for missing it.  Once again, Jeremy was the last to know something.

She having trouble focusing.  “It started out as a small feeling when I was away.  And when I came back, it grew bigger and bigger until this morning, it finally grew too big for me to ignore.”

“Why did you ignore it?” he chided her, holding onto her arms.  “Do you know that since you’ve been back I have to keep telling myself to get a grip around you?  That I’m just dreaming if I think your smiles are for me?  That you’re Hyung’s girlfriend?  Go Mi Nam, why would you ignore something so important like...ah.”

He suddenly realised why she’d been keeping her feelings for him a secret.  “Tae Kyung Hyung.”

“Hyung-nim has a very soft heart,” she said sadly.  “Today, I told him that our feelings had changed and I said goodbye to him, but he found it hard to let me go.  Even though he agreed that I was right, he was still hurting a lot.”

Jeremy sighed.  “I feel like a fool.”

“I wanted to be honest, with him and you,” she explained.  “I wasn’t going to tell you until I had finished my time in Africa, but every time I see you, I want you to know how special you are to me.  I don’t expect anything, I just wanted to tell you.”

“Mi Nyeo.”

“Eh?”

“I’m so glad that you didn’t wait to tell me.”

He took her head in his hands so that his thumbs grazed her cheeks, and made his feelings clear by returning her kiss to her.  He gave it tenderly, with a hint of the craziness he’d been feeling lately.  He didn’t think that he could be any more in love with her, but she parted to embrace him, and he tasted just enough of her sweetness to make him fall deeper.

She’d made him so happy that once the kiss ended, he wanted to sing to the streets that she was his.  Instead, he settled for a smile on his face and led her home by the hand, whispering silly things in her ear to make her laugh.  Mi Nyeo hadn’t said it, but he was sure that she was very worried about Tae Kyung.

“Mi Nyeo,” he said, stopping her as they climbed up the driveway of the ANJell dorms.  “I don’t want to hurt Hyung any more than you do.”

She gave him a solemn nod, and pulled her hand out of his.  “You are right, Jeremy.  We will be careful so that he has a good Christmas.”

“You have such a good heart,” he said, kissing her forehead.  “It’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

Her eyes grew big under the glow of the street lamp.

“What?” he said, unembarrassed.  “Is it really that much of a surprise that I love you?  Maybe I didn’t kiss you right?”

Her smile came back.  “No.  I’ve just never had one of those kisses before.”

Jeremy pouted as they climbed the paved steps to the door.  “The next time I have you alone, I will do much better, and not a single part of you will doubt my feelings.”

She blushed at the thought as they pushed their way inside, where Tae Kyung was waiting for them.