Chapter 4: Onstage and Backstage

Yonghwa took a deep breath as he waited for the go ahead to go on stage. CNBlue was only going to play three songs, one of which was a song they had released right before going to the army. If his dongsaengs only knew that just last night, Yonghwa had been crying over leaving for camp. But the good news was that he knew the song like the back of his hand.

It was the other two songs he was worried about. These days, the broadcasting stations allowed them to play plugged-in, which meant that mock-playing wasn’t an option. He had nearly missed the practice run-through from being late that morning, but it had been a big waste anyway. He had painstakingly made his way through two songs Future Yonghwa had written but that he didn’t know, and his dongsaengs called him out on his “mistakes”, not having a clue that he had never felt so lost on a stage before.

Once they made it back to the dressing room, he spent the next three hours leading up to the concert to his performance learning the last two songs with their help. He didn’t quite explain to them what was going on but went with a lie instead. He told them that he had hit his head in the shower that morning and had trouble remembering the songs. When they insisted that he go to the hospital, he told another lie, telling them that he felt fine, that memories were coming back to him, but it would help to learn the songs as if for the first time again.

He could see how worried they all looked, but he assured them as any leader would, and they pulled together and taught him the songs over the next three hours of waiting. He convinced Jonghyun that he needed to be all things guitar and that he would concentrate on singing only and try with his guitar.

The PD called for CNBlue to go out on stage and took another deep breath. He had to do this. He couldn’t let that woman on the phone have her satisfaction of making a joke out of him.

Together as a band, he, Jonghyun, Minhyuk,and Jungshin walked out onto the stage. They were met with applause and screams and several live cameras focused on their every move. They each took their positions, got familiar and comfortable with their instruments and then their portion of the concert began.

Yonghwa fell into the familiarity of the song, empowered by the enthusiastic cheers and chants of fans. Yes, the fans were still there, maybe even more than he remembered. There were a lot of foreigners in the crowd as well, singing along to his song. The more love he felt from the crowd, the more he got into it, and he knew he was going to get through this. And if he could get through this, he could get through waking up in the future with Seohyun.

CNBlue was bigger than ever. Future Yonghwa had made his band’s dreams come true.

***

Seohyun watched CNBlue’s stage with fascination. Yonghwa not only got through the first song, but the second one too, and was now making his way through the third one more energetic than he began. He had made some awkward mistakes, but the crowd was so excited, it seemed like they could care less. She could understand why. Their songs rocked hard and gave off a positive, freeing vibe.

It encouraged her to try to do as well as Yonghwa had. She had been clumsy and all over the place during the practice run-through and had received aggravated looks from her unnies. Afterwards, Sooyoung pitied her and decided to help her out after all.

As it turned out, SNSD was performing, but only as a surprise guest to accompany Taeyeon, who had recently become a solo artist. She was going to perform one song, and then they would join her with two y pop numbers that sounded more y than pop. Both songs had intricate dance moves in which Yuri and Yoona alternated dance breaks.

Seohyun and Sooyoung practiced for over 3 hours in the dressing room, learning her singing verses and dance steps. The first half hour, Sooyoung had stopped and simply stared at her. “You really have no idea what you’re doing, do you? You’re scaring me, Seohyun-ah.”

“Unnie,” Seohyun hesitated, frowning, “what if I told you that I woke up in the future, this future, somehow married to Yonghwa oppa, with a daughter and an Omma talking about more grandchildren. What would you say to me?”

Sooyoung waited a long time before answering. “I’d say, maybe we should take you to the hospital. You’re seriously scaring me.”

Seohyun shuttered. If she was sick, she’d be the first person in the van, asking to go to the hospital, but they’d think she was mentally ill. She’d get locked up in some psych ward and would forever be trapped in this nightmare. She thought about Yonghwa, going through the same thing.

“I’ll be ok. I just need you to answer something. Why Jung Yonghwa? Why did I marry him?”

“Who cares? It’s what happens after you’re married, right? You guys aren’t called the Nation’s Couple for nothing.”

It wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Seohyun shut up and continued practicing into hour three. Sooyoung had used mini donuts to show Seohyun placings on stage of all of the members and kept taking bites out of them whenever she moved them to a different place. But there was no donut for Hyoyeon.

Now, as CNBlue finished up and was leaving the stage, she took a deep breath.

“Just get through it”, she kept whispering to herself. “Please, Juhyun, just get through it.”

The band greeted her group as they passed each other, although Jungshin and Sooyoung with glares. Yonghwa looked relieved and beyond satisfied. He was so high off of the moment that he almost looked past her, but they caught each other’s eye, and he stopped.

“Seohyun-ah, you ok?” he asked, sweat dripping from his forehead and hair.

She looked around and pulled him slightly away from her group and his band. “Oppa, everything’s wrong. Hyoyeon unnie isn’t here. Sooyoung unnie wants to take me to the hospital.”

“Did you learn everything?” he asked.

She looked at him incredulously and huffed. “Nae. I just don’t know how much I’ll remember. But didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Taeyeon, go out! So Nyuh Shi Dae, take your positions!” a PD shouted. Seohyun panicked, wanting to cry.

Yonghwa grabbed her shoulders lightly. “Right now, the only important thing is your performance. Just get through it, and we’ll figure everything out. I’ll meet you in the dressing room afterwards. We’ll leave early.”

“Seohyun-ah, come on!” Yoona shouted for her.

Yonghwa looked around on his body. He had changed into a more suitable outfit for performing than his sweatpants he had found back at the apartment. He took off one of his necklaces and quickly placed it around her neck. It was cold against her skin.

“What is this for?”

“It’ll give you luck? I don’t know. Just—“

“Seohyun-sshi! Hurry up!” another PD yelled.

“—wear it. Go! I’ll see you after, ok? Just remember, you’re So Nyuh Shi Dae. You’re on top of the world.”

“Ok,” she nodded at him.

She ran awkwardly in her heels towards the area Yoona had disappeared. Yonghwa and the band hung around to watch their performance in the monitor. He watched as Taeyeon, who was met with loud cheers, sang a rock ballad he himself could’ve written. Toward the end of her song, the music shifted, and slowly, he watched as the rest of SNSD emerged from pink-lit fog. At first, the crowd went wild, but the cheering calmed down soon after.

It was a little strange to him. SNSD usually got ridiculous amounts of love, but something about the audience told him that they were slightly wary of the group. Yonghwa also noticed that Hyoyeon was indeed missing.

Seohyun had put on a confident face, but he wasn’t convinced. When she sang her first part, she sounded unsure and slightly out of tune. The more the song went on, he watched as she touched the necklace he had given her more frequently and slowly became more confident.

They shifted into a dance number, which left Seohyun looking lost again, but she overcame it and fell into sync with the others. It was a miracle. Both of them were going to survive this nightmare of a situation.

He went back to his dressing room, wanting to be ready when she finished so that they could leave right away. They had a lot of figure out and the chaotic backstage wasn’t the place to do it.    

***

Seohyun ran off the stage feeling relieved. She out there and had messed up several times, there was no doubt about it, but it was over. She had tried her best within the time span she had. Now, she could escape everything and hopefully figure out a way to wake back up where she was supposed to.

She was almost to the dressing room when the rest of the girls and her manager caught up.

“Seohyun, change your costume!” shouted her manager, tugging lightly at her arm amidst the chaos. “You perform in 20 minutes!”

“But we just performed,” she replied in confusion.

“Not with the members,” he was exasperated. “With Yonghwa.”

“What?!”

“Change your costume now!” her manager shouted over everyone yet again. “There’s no time for this.”

***

“Uh, Hyung, what are you doing?” asked Jungshin when the band entered the dressing room and saw that he was dressed in regular clothes.

“Oh. Seohyun and I are going to head home early, but maybe we can all have dinner sometime,” said Yonghwa hurriedly, sliding past them towards the door.

“You still have a performance. You can’t just leave.”

“What performance? What do you mean?”

“With Seohyun.”

His heart sank lower and lower. “We didn’t have a practice run. How do we still have a performance but no practice run?”

“It’s your own lame concept that you two never do a practice run,” Jonghyun wiped the sweat off of his face. “Did you forget how to play this one too?”

“I can’t believe they’re still making us perform Banmal Song after all this time,” Yonghwa muttered.        

Minhyuk looked at him incredulously. “Banmal Song? Hyung, that was over 8 years ago. You’re going to perform ‘What’s Real’.”

“’What’s Real’?” Yonghwa repeated.

 “The song you wrote to publicly propose to Seohyun,” finished Minhyuk. 

“The song you spent your entire last year of military service composing?” Jonghyun added, giving Yonghwa a strange look.    

He felt sick.

“Play me the song, now! Annio, Jungshin, go get Seohyun. Tell her to come no matter what.”

“But Hyung—“

“Jungshin, if you don’t do what I say right now, I will kill you. Over and over again. Go and get her now!” he shouted.

Jungshin made a noise and scowled. Before he could open the door, Seohyun burst into the room.

“Oppa!” she cried. “We’re in big trouble. 20 minutes worth of big trouble.”

“Calm down, I just found out,” he grabbed her shoulders. “We’re going to learn it right now. It’s apparently the song I publicly proposed to you with.”

“Chinchayo?” Her eyes widened. She looked a little impressed.

“I’m 100% confused,” said Jonghyun, as Minhyuk and Jungshin fumbled with finding the song. “Are we supposed to be playing along with your act?”

“We’ll talk about it later. Right now, it’s important that we learn this song.”

“Oppa, this is too much,” said Seohyun. “Do you know what Sooyoung unnie told me? She said we were the Nation’s Couple, and oppa said something similar. They’re expecting us to act a certain way.”

“Seohyun, relax. It’s not like they want us to kiss onstage. We’re just singing a duet. We’ve done that before.”

“With real feelings?”

He sighed. “Probably. This isn’t any different. We just have to sing with some emotion and stare into each other’s eyes.”

“Ok, fine. Let’s just start quickly.”

Seohyun had the idea to watch a quick fancam video to see how they had split the parts before for a duet. Yonghwa was able to quickly learn the basic notes and keys of the song on his acoustic guitar. The lyrics were pretty straightforward and well organized much to his liking. They were honest and held nothing back as he told her how much he loved her and how she needed to be his. He told her that no matter what they faced, together they would be strong and rely on each other. Yonghwa wished he knew as much as Future Yonghwa. No girl could turn down a song like “What’s Real”, but Seohyun could. He knew her. The proposal song couldn’t have been the only thing that allowed her to accept him?

20 minutes went by in the blink of an eye and both Yonghwa, in his new performance clothes, a regular blue button-down shirt and jeans and Seohyun in hers, a flowy floral dress and boots, walking towards the stage entrance, facing impending music doom.

The MCs talked and joked as Yonghwa and Seohyun snuck out on stage in the darkness. Seohyun had been offered a guitar, but she refused it. Apparently, she and Yonghwa not only dueted with their voices but with instruments. She was learning the guitar but surely wasn’t skilled enough to be playing a full song with him. Future Seohyun probably had many new talents.

When the MCs were finished, the lights went up and Yonghwa and Seohyun, the Nation’s Couple, were met with thunderous cheers and applause. Seohyun forced a smile. Yonghwa fussed with his guitar, afraid to face the crowd. This was going to be bad. Really bad. They made eye contact and told each other what they needed to.

Yonghwa took a deep breath and started playing. He took the first part of the first verse, the words coming and leaving as fast as he had remembered them. Seohyun eventually joined in, finishing up the first full verse, and they powered through the intimate chorus. They made eye contact again, both with panic in their eyes, but would the crowd notice?

The entire crowd clapped along.

It was Seohyun’s turn to start the second verse, and she did, getting halfway through, but forgot the words when she tore her eyes away from Yonghwa’s and tried to look into the crowd. She couldn’t recover from it, and soon the crowd would know that they were frauds. She clutched at the necklace he had given her for luck.

“Uh, Yonghwa yeobo?” she began to speak. The crowd cheered at the word ‘yeobo’, making her blush.

“Nae?” he looked at her nervously.

“We’ve been married for awhile, right? But why does it feel as if today our marriage is brand new?”

He picked up that she was adlibbing. “I feel it too. It makes my heart flutter, like the time I used this song to propose to you.” Not like he actually knew. He hadn’t been there to experience anything.

“Nae. My heart also fluttered,” she agreed, trying to imagine how she would’ve felt when she had the radio and listened to it. “I smiled for days. And now, here we are.”

“Here we are,” he repeated.

There was another silence as Yonghwa continued to play the guitar melody of the song.

“Yongwha uri, we should say hello to our daughter at home,” Seohyun spoke again. “Without this song, we would have never met her.”

“Oh, nae!” Yonghwa said cheerfully. “Yunjie and Pudding, are you watching your parents sing and talk well? Hopefully, you can join us on stage.”

The crowd cheered happily again.

Yonghwa started singing the chorus of the song again, and Seohyun joined in. They looked at each other nervously as he signaled with his eyes that he was going to end the song. The applause came despite their terrible effort to get through the song.

They bowed to the crowd and left the way they came.

“Sorry! I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.” Seohyun quickly apologized, running a hand through her hair.

“It’s ok. You did better than I would’ve.”

“But the people clapped and cheered. It couldn’t have been that bad, right?”

“Either way, I’m sure our companies will be having a talk with us.” He turned to her, breathing a sigh of relief and exhaustion. “It’s over now though. We can go home, and figure this out.”

However, they were ambushed again by all of their members. Everyone spoke at once. Sooyoung and Jungshin kept a good perimeter away from each other but still had conversations with others. Sunny was bouncing her baby on her hip while her husband said hello to Seohyun and initiated a short conversation. Taeyeon had to stop Tae Joon from plucking roughly at Jonghyun’s guitar. Seohyun and Yonghwa were separated until greetings and goodbyes ended and they wandered out of the storm, exhausted. 

A/N: Sorry for the super long wait and the crappy chapter. It was the holiday break and I got super busy with everything. But it’s over and I can get back to writing again. The next chapter will be posted soon. Thank you for reading!!