Chapter 12: Yong Potter and Hyunmione

The next day, as the CN Blue boys set out for their own individual vacations, Yonghwa and Seohyun prepared for theirs. Seohyun had spent all night digging through her and Yunji’s closets trying to decide on what she should wear while in Busan. It was warm there this time of year, but Seohyun didn’t know if she should dress more nicely or more casual to spend time with Yonghwa’s family. Yonghwa told her casual, and had packed his own suitcase accordingly, but Seohyun didn’t want to look like a bum in front of her mother-in-law. Jonghyun, Minhyuk, and Jungshin hadn’t exactly given her the scoop on how well she got along with the woman.  

Seohyun remembered meeting Yonghwa’s mother a long time ago on “We Got Married”. The woman had been nice, really stylish, and had treated her kindly the whole time, but they had spent no more than an hour and a half together. She wondered how their meeting would go now that they were actually married in real life. There was a difference between meeting her with several cameras pointed in their faces and meeting her alone.

In the end, Seohyun put a mix in her suitcase of pretty dresses and accessories and jeans and comfortable shirts. Her fashion sense hadn’t changed much, except the abundance of lacy underwear. Seohyun had no idea, but Yonghwa had snuck a fistful of lingerie in her suitcase the night before to play a prank on her while she had been in the bathroom getting ready for bed. He wondered what her reaction would be and couldn’t stop snickering to himself as they took their own sides of the bed and lied down to sleep.

The next day, Yunji burst into their bedroom, chanting “Busan! Busan! Halmoni, Busan! Harabeoji!, Busan!—“

The song continued as she listed off family member after family member and until Seohyun sat up in bed with sleep in her eyes and Yonghwa buried himself further under his covers.

“Busan, yay!” Yunji leapt onto the bed, sending her knee in Yonghwa’s stomach. He grunted and emerged from his blankets. “Appa, Appa, get up! Omma, Omma, let’s go!”

“Yunji, quiet down,” Seohyun moaned in fatigue. “We know, we know, Busan. Give us a moment and go back to your room.”

The little girl silently agreed to, but not without leaving the room chanting her Busan song loudly.

Despite his fatigue, Yonghwa snickered. “I’ve never heard anyone that excited to go to Busan before.”

***

By the time Seohyun forced herself and Yonghwa to get up and get ready, the three of them had eaten breakfast as a family, and Yonghwa helped the cab driver load up the trunk with their suitcases, some of Yunji’s excitement had rubbed off on Seohyun. She had experienced many different chaotic scenarios with Yonghwa, but this time, they were on vacation and their every move wasn’t going to lead to possible public disaster. Hopefully, anyway.

She had sudden memories of traveling by train with Yonghwa a long time ago to Busan to meet his mother and friends under very different circumstances. She remembered him gifting her matching glasses, him teaching her satoori and joking that they would have to eat hamburgers with his family. She remembered liking him, really liking him, and despite the cameras in her face, pretending in her mind that she was really his girlfriend.

Wow. These thoughts had snuck up on her, and she felt slightly surprised at her naivety of the feelings she had had once. 

She glanced at Yonghwa, who was wheeling their suitcases along the train platform, as Yunji spun around with her bear happily, almost tripping over her own feet.

“Yunji baby, be careful,” he said naturally, and Seohyun wondered if he realized he had used the nickname Future Seohyun and Yonghwa had established for their daughter. Yunji stopped spinning right away and joined him at his side, ready to enter the train.

Seohyun continued to watch him. He was wearing a pair of cool looking shades, but she could tell he was looking around restlessly, excited and eager for the trip.

She remembered sitting in the train next to him, holding his hand cautiously under a jacket so that the cameramen and PDs wouldn’t see, laying her head comfortably on his shoulder. She remembered the feeling she used to get around him in those days.

He looked at her then, although she couldn’t see his eyes past the sunglasses, and smiled.

“What? Do I look cool?” he asked.

“Not really,” she lied.

“Jashik,” he snickered. She remembered that too. Hadn’t the studio MCs said that he called her that whenever he felt really happy? “Put yours on too. We’ll look like a celebrity family.”

“We are a celebrity family,” she replied, taking her own pair of sunglasses out and putting them on.Yunji saw her family and pulled a small pair of sunglasses out with ducks on them and put them on.

Yonghwa and Seohyun laughed. They continued waiting for the train. Around them, people noticed who they were, but they kept a safe distance away. When the train came, they boarded like everyone else and found choice seats in a near empty car.

“Seohyun,” said Yonghwa, “we did this once. Remember?”

She didn’t know she had been waiting for him to acknowledge that he, too, remembered the days of their fake marriage, but she was. She allowed herself a smile, “Nae, I remember. Same place, very different circumstances.”

A man came to check their tickets, and they settled into their seats comfortably, side by side with Yunji across from them. Yunji had packed a few of her toys all on her own, and was pulling out a handheld educational game, one of the many Taeyeon had talked to Seohyun about.

“You called me ‘Jashik’ a moment ago, on the platform,” Seohyun sat to Yonghwa after awhile, aware that it sounded kind of random.

“I guess it’s that kind of day. I’m feeling pretty good about this visit. Really curious to see what’s changed and what hasn’t,” Yonghwa admitted. “I wonder if my brother married his girlfriend, and if my father’s retired. I wonder how well my omma’s doing, and my friends. Are we all still friends?”

Seohyun remembered them too, Yonghwa’s friends. She remembered feeling so shy, how excited they had been to meet her, but how awkward the outing had been since they were all older, and she didn’t want her feelings to seem fake to them. Wow. Again, her feelings of then blew through her as a strong wind.

Yonghwa looked at her, and like the choding she remembered him as, he began singing Yunji’s Busan song in a child-like voice, Busan! Busan! Ommeoni, Busan! Doomaekpaem, Busan!”

Seohyun elbowed him, whining at his childish ways, and he laughed like a naughty kid.  

The train took off some fifteen minutes later. She hefted a mini duffel bag onto her lap and began rummaging through it. “I packed it this morning while you slept a little longer. They’re healthy snacks for the trip so we don’t have to buy anything. And since Yunji had to shoot the banana milk commercial for two days straight, I doubt she wants to drink it for a couple of weeks. So, help yourself, Oppa.”

Yonghwa looked from the food to her. “You packed all of this? For a 3 hour trip?”

She looked down at the duffel bag shyly. She hadn’t really thought of it like that. “It’s not that much. Just enough to get us through lunch. Maybe your omma can use the rest for something.”

“Seohyun, it’s fine,” he patted her on the shoulder gingerly. “I’m actually touched. I thought you’d be nervous visiting my family. Too nervous to consider stuff like this.”

“I am nervous,” she admitted, “but I’ve met her once before. If she liked me as your fake wife, she must like me as your real wife.”

“What makes you think she liked you as my fake wife?”

She simply stared at him at a loss for words. Then he laughed again, loudly, nudging her as she crossed her arms angrily. This trip was already bringing out the choding side she knew made up much of his personality.

“Seohyun-ah, come on,” he nudged and nudged, still laughing. “I was joking! She liked you that time. She really did. My friends too.”   

“Yong choding,” she said aloud, scolding him playfully with her eyes. “Wasn’t that your nickname during that time?”

“Annio! I was a man then, a man! I wasn’t a choding.”

“A man? What man? You haven’t changed at all. Ah, chinjayo!”

Yonghwa held her gaze smirking. “Isn’t it weird?” he said after awhile. “I have all of these memories with you, and it’s taken us this long to feel comfortable enough to talk about them.”

Seohyun nodded in agreement. “Memories of a fake marriage, but no memories of a real one. The sad, strange life of Yongseo.”

“Yongseo…” it was like a foreign word on Yonghwa’s tongue. “I haven’t said that with my own mouth in so long.”

Then it dawned on Seohyun. She clapped her hands and startled Yonghwa, but Yunji didn’t look up from her game.

“What?” asked Yonghwa.

The wheels were turning ever so quickly in Seohyun’s mind as she began to speak. “We were once in a fake marriage, thrown together to somehow form a fresh, seemingly romantic relationship for entertainment purposes, right?”

“Well, I needed to promote CNBlue at that time, and my seongsangnim thought I should do something to establish me as a Busan flower boy,” mumbled Yonghwa, lost in his own thoughts for a moment, but Seohyun pulled him back.

“But as long as the producer gets his entertainment, things are golden. The woman on the phone has an agenda that has to do with us being together. She sounded… cold when she called that night, like she was frustrated with me. From the way you tell your side of the story, she acted the same way towards you.”

“So she pushed us together like this because she’s frustrated and wants us to entertain her?”

“Annio,” said Seohyun. “She wants us to change something. She’s hoping that we’ll form another relationship, like we did on the show, and something will change. Why exactly, I don’t know.”

“But Future Seohyun and Yonghwa were already in a relationship, and a seemingly loving one with close friends and a beautiful daughter,” said Yonghwa. “There’s nothing to change. It seems more like a punishment. ‘Throw these two people together and watch them suffer because I feel like it’.”

“That’s what’s weird. Why us? Why not me and someone else or you and another girl? Why now, why this point in time? Why that night? It’s not a punishment, Oppa. It’s personal, and it’s meaningful.”

The both of them got goosebumps then, and Yonghwa knew that Seohyun was on to something.

He laughed excitedly. “I feel like Harry Potter right now. Riding a train and solving important mysteries.”

“Does that make me Hermione, Yong Potter?” Seohyun joked.

“Nae, Hyunmione. You keep solving while my brain takes a vacation,” he took a snack bowl out of her duffel bag, lifted the top, and began eating. “We’ll track down the woman and be back to the past in no time.”

“Oppa,” Seohyun whined. She, too, was excited by her conclusion. “Let’s finish talking about it.”

“We will, just not right now. I’m actually looking forward to this trip. For once, let the woman on the phone sweat while we have fun.” Yonghwa said it a little louder than he needed to, and Seohyun allowed herself a smile, knowing that he wanted that sneaky woman-on-the-phone to hear him.

“Ok,” she agreed, timidly making a fist. “Busan, fighting!”

After hearing the word, ‘Busan’, Yonghwa launched into the newly created Yongseo family Busan song with a spirited fevor. Yunji sat down her handheld game and joined in happily. Seohyun clapped along, blushing for the both of them, and the train rolled along.

A/N: Please anticipate the next few chapters. :D 

Ps: we all know in actuality that Yonghwa is actually Ron Weasley to Seohyun’s Hermione Granger ;)