Jealousy.











 Zhang Liyin never gets jealous. It’s a term almost unknown to her being. She always believed that you get what you deserved, all the time. Be it good, be it bad, if that’s what you are bestowed with, that is what is due to you.

As a child she was very much loved – in her tiny family, in the community, in school. She was taught to play the violin, and learn she did. Her recitals were sought after, like that of her violinist parents. She sung, too. Loved it more than the violin she did, much to her father’s dismay.

And then, she was told she could be a star – a voice like hers would, without a doubt, propel her to stardom. She grabbed the chance. Liyin left her parents almost without a glance back.

During training, Liyin does her best. She sung her heart out as musch as she could. She earns not very positive remarks from her classmates. She could not even talk in straight Korean and she already acted as if she was better than every one. So she shrinks, and she turns the other way. She deserves every rolled-eye sent her way.

Timeless happens and she gets acclaim. Too much, she thinks. How can people like her when her voice breaks every time she sings with Junsu Sunbae, is a puzzle to her. But she thanks them all with a wide smile. She figures she has worked hard for it – so it’s something that is due her.

I like you, he tells her after the eleventh time they grab dinner together. Her breath hitches, head tilts to the side, and asks him to say whatever it is he just said again. I like you, he breathes, verbatim.

Being with Junsu make things pretty much okay – well, that is if you discount the increased amounts of negative remarks thrown at her, and the rumors that circulate behind her back. Like always, she smiles widely at them and, then, turns around and moves on. Her friends say they are only jealous, but Liyin cannot wrap her head around that.

When Junsu gets jealous, he goes berserk, dragging Liyin along with him. He calls her name softly, sweetly, but his dark eyes everything but gentle. He forbids her to go out or hangout with her friends – males and females alike, only she has more male friends than females so things get complicated whenever he finds out she’s been out. Liyin tries to assure him, over and over. She tells him that she is with him, and she sings to calm him down.

Still, Liyin does not understand jealousy. It’s irrational and nonsensical. But her oppa’s a jealous guy, no matter what she says, he just can’t seem to help himself.

She controls herself; stays cool whenever he’s too hot and scorching.

However, stubborn Liyin is pushed to her limit one day. She, herself, doesn’t understand why, she just feels herself blow up. She pushed him away. Her cool head, suddenly up to a seeming boiling point, she yells at him.

Liyin breaks it off with him. And she gets to have the time of her life.

That is, until she, herself learn how it is to be jealous.

Zhang Liyin decides to stay at home, one exhausting night. She switches on her laggy laptop and browses naver and cyworld. She is surprised by pictures she never expected to see in her life.

Liyin never gets jealous. The term is virtually unknown to her, really. She believes that whatever it is that you have, that you find, that you lose, you deserve. It’s like that saying that everything happens for a reason. Liyin thinks jealousy – as she sees in everyone around her – is irrational, nonsensical, and idiotic.

But everything changed when she feels Junsu, finally and really, slipping from her grasp.