case 02

chapter 14: rain in my heart

He had seen that scene before – boy sees girl dancing alone in an empty practice room, watches her every pirouette, and waits for her to finish her practice, only to run away before she can peep her head out of the door. It is that way day in and day out, until he finally musters the courage to ask her out, tell her he’d fallen in love with her at first sight, and she would giggle shyly to herself because she had, too. It was the stuff of the movies, but Johnny had always thought it was a load of bull.

So he didn’t know why his feet led him back to that dingy studio every Friday night, not letting him leave until the final thrum of her music. He didn’t run away, he’d never intended to be there to begin with – was his excuse when he rushed back to the PC-bang before she could step out. He wasn’t a coward if it was out of his control, he told himself.

One rainy Friday, the muffling effects of the downpour rendered him one beat too late. Or rather, she was one beat too fast.

“Hey,” she said, her voice silky and her lips upturned, “I’ve been seeing you around a lot these days.”

She leaned against the glass pane, with her side profile to die for even under the faint spills of light. Despite her small stature, she had a flawless bone structure, with perfectly proportioned curves and angles. Her pair of glimmering eyes were framed by thick, luscious lashes, batting enchantingly at him every few seconds, as though her entire being wasn’t already the embodiment of temptation. Johnny never thought there would come a day where he would go weak in the knees just by looking at a girl.

He harrumphed weakly, attempting to steady himself. “The bathroom’s just really hard to find,” he said. Internally, he was cringing. He didn’t know when all his skills had left him.

“Well, if you’re coming from the PC-bang, the bathroom’s the other way,” she chuckled. Adding insult to his injuries, she pointed a manicured finger in the opposite direction.

Johnny wanted to die. He was being pathetic. It was something he wouldn’t put past Jungwoo, sure, but not himself. Johnny Suh wasn’t an amateur – he was a master. This was below him.

“Thanks, beautiful,” he said, reverting back to his textbook methods. He cocked his head, shot her a flirtatious smile –of course, without actually looking at her, because his knees would buckle again– and turned away.

“Hey.”

He stopped – what else was he supposed to do? “Yeah?”

“I’m Irene.” Her lips spread into a wide, amused smile. “And I’ll be done in five minutes.”

Johnny stood frozen at his spot, completely shell-shocked.

She tilted her head. “Enough time for you to find that bathroom and come back?”

“Y-yeah,” he stammered.

“Good. See you.”

Shooting him a heart-stopping little wink, she ducked back into the practice room. Johnny thought she had turned him into stone. It was only then that he realized that he’d never actually found out where the damn bathroom was.

Standing on the empty pavement, Johnny felt the cold, wintery wind bluster his senses away. His eyes adjusted to the equally shell-shocked woman in front of him. It was the stuff of movies, and at the same time it was a load of bull.

Johnny had almost forgotten how small Irene was – her 5’2 to his 6’0 was jarring. She had grown smaller, thinner, and perhaps even older, with shadows passing her face and a jaded sheen over her eyes. But everything about her was still as strikingly beautiful as he remembered, and he could slowly feel his bones soften into jelly. Irene would still be the only person in the world who could render Johnny weak in the knees, even years later.

“H-how are you?” Johnny croaked. He knew he sounded kind of pathetic, but it was the only thing he could manage against the current of tension in the air.

Irene’s stone-cold statue came to life, her eyes going from startled to pensive. “I’m alright,” she murmured, and Johnny could tell she had activated all her inner guards. “And you?”

“I’m alright, too.”

They then reverted back into the cold, heavy silence, staring each other like thoughts could magically turn into speech. Part of Johnny wondered how many polite, white lies it would take before either of them would start telling each other the truth. If we can even get there, Johnny thought bitterly. He knew he’d probably count his blessings she was even in front of him at all.

“Why are you here–“

“Why’d you come here–“

Irene and Johnny had never been telepathic, so they both looked up in disbelief when they started on similar versions of the same question. “You can go first,” Irene beckoned politely, before Johnny could even try to put forth a gentlemanly display.

“I’m supposed to meet a client here,” he said. Close to the truth, he thought lamely. He hoped the conversation would continue in that trajectory.

She angled her eyebrows in bewilderment. “At a dance studio?”

“This is a dance studio?” It was Johnny’s turn to be bewildered. Then again, it made sense that Irene was there if it was. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Not to see a client,” she said. Johnny stifled a chuckle. He could tell that she did, too. “I teach here.”

That figures. “Ballet?” he clarified.

“No. Pop.” Johnny opened his mouth, about to continue along those lines, but he figured Irene’s curt, succinct answer meant that she didn’t want him to continue. “How about you? Still in corporate law?”

She still maintained a relatively polite tone, but her eyes had dimmed a little, though he wondered if there had been any light at all.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I pivoted to divorce law a couple years back.”

“Oh.”

Irene grew quiet. Johnny bit his lower lip, realizing he had pulled a trigger he wasn’t intending to pull. It didn’t help that the subject matter of his career was one of the reasons behind the underlying tension between them, rendering an already difficult conversation even more excruciating. Perhaps he should have lied, but that would defeat the purpose.

Is this where you’ve been? Is this where you ran? Why couldn’t you call? Why couldn’t you have told me? You’re the one who’s been leaving the flowers, aren’t you– Johnny’s mind swarmed with questions. They crept to the tip of his tongue, but he could barely utter a word. He was still as pathetic as the day they had met. Nothing had changed.

“Johnny?” Another voice fractured the silence between them. Johnny raised his head, eyes meeting those of the very ‘client’ he had referred to. Johnny took a step forward, then a step back, his eyes darting between Irene’s and Victoria’s.

“Go ahead,” Irene gestured. She quickly side-stepped to the right, moving herself out of the way though Johnny thought she wasn’t at all.

“Irene, I–“

“No, no, go ahead,” she interrupted. “I won’t keep you.”

She darted back into the building, disappearing without a trace like she did five years before. Johnny turned to look at Victoria, forcing up the edges of his lips.

“I won’t keep you.” He couldn’t help but wish that she did.

“So you saw Johnny with Irene, and then you decided to run away?” Jaehyun chuckled.

“I broke my phone, remember?” Seulgi reminded. She angled her chin in the direction of the phone shop’s salesperson, who was trying to determine if she could trade in her phone – or whatever was left from the sorry wreckage.

Jaehyun gazed at her from the corner of his eyes. “So, you decided to run to me?” he continued, his tone laced with bemusement. “If that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.”               

Jaehyun was smirking, and if he didn’t look at her in a way that made her heart melt, she would have had a mind to clobber him to death. So Seulgi just rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her ribs in annoyance – at Jaehyun’s teasing or her own weakness to it, she didn’t quite know.

“No, we were supposed to have lunch together, and I didn’t want to waste your time if I wasn’t able to contact you.” Her voice was high and defensive at first, before it dropped to an embarrassed murmur. “Plus, you know I’m not good with tech.”

“You know, you can just tell me that you value my opinion,” Jaehyun laughed. There was a slight tinge of pink on Seulgi’s cheeks. She was ridiculously adorable, and it only made him want to even more.

The salesperson had scuttled back, carrying Seulgi’s damaged phone. He explained that she could have it traded in if she paid a fee for repairs. She was about to just opt for getting her old phone fixed, when Jaehyun sent the salesperson away with his credit card and an order to bring out all the newest models he had in the store. She would have protested, but Jaehyun was as stubborn as a mule, the only person in her life more difficult and vexing than her older brother.  

“Why was Johnny there?” Jaehyun asked. “You said that it’s been in a while since he’s seen– no, known where Irene was.”

“Beats me.” On the way to the phone store, she figured that Mark could have given Johnny his card, too, but that would make for an odd mix of coincidences. “I didn’t know Irene was there, either. I haven’t been able to contact her since she and Johnny separated.”

“That’s right,” he remembered, “you and Irene were pretty close for a while, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, until–“

Seulgi faltered, and quickly turned away. Jaehyun understood. There were some things they never spoke about, some wounds that even time could not heal. It was the same reason Irene had detached herself from her old life, and Johnny’s only pleasure was a in a bottle of Soju.

“Either way, it’s good he’s found her,” Seulgi said, drawing her breath. “They do deserve to have some kind of closure.”

Jaehyun nodded. “So does Mark, honestly.”

Seulgi raised her brows. “What’s Mark got to do with any of this?”

“I mean, you did leave the poor boy with the false hope that you’d turn up for his trial class,” Jaehyun pointed out. Seulgi squeezed her eyes shut, breaking into frustrated laughter. “Johnny, Mark, me – how many hearts are you going to break, Kang Seulgi?”

Seulgi narrowed her eyes and pinched him on the shoulder. “I’m not taking that when it’s coming from you, Jung Jaehyun.”

“Oh, you will.” The salesperson was back, this time with an array of smartphones way too new-fangled for the simple, uncomplicated Seulgi. “This one,” Jaehyun said, jabbing a finger at the fanciest one he could set his eyes on, “and help me add my number to its speed dial.”

Victoria stepped over the threshold of the practice room, the warm afternoon light filtering through the dusty windows and soaking her form in golden hues. Johnny trudged behind her, lingering at the doorway, reluctant to enter.

Johnny realized he’d only seen Victoria outside of a professional context in two occasions. The first was when he had gotten roaring drunk and Seulgi, his