Almost half a year had passed since that incident you had with Yongguk on the set of ‘Going Crazy’. During all this time, you had tried to avoid any occasion that would require you to see his hateful face again. You were very apologetic to Himchan for walking out on one of the biggest opportunities he’d had in his quest to be famous, but just thinking about how Yongguk had treated you made you angry. It was so humiliating, just thinking of how you tried to talk to him, and gave him the opportunity to get the upper hand. You vowed to yourself that such a scene was never going to happen again.

During this time, you’d barely seen your brother, since his debut was coming up soon and he was really busy practising. Meanwhile, the summer vacation gave you more time to take up more modelling jobs, and also go down to the studio to work with your song-writing teacher more, so you’d been kept pretty busy too. You still met up with Himchan for meals at least once a week, but you’d pick him up and drive him out somewhere, in order to minimize the chances of running into Yongguk near their dorms. Your brother found your actions quite childish, but they were just a response to the childish behaviour that you were dealt first.

It’s August now, and since school was starting soon, you were taking a few days off to rest at home alone. It was quite therapeutic to just laze around, waking up in the afternoon with nothing to do once in a while, although you couldn’t do nothing for longer than three days a stretch before your workaholic instincts kicked in. For now, though, you were pretty relaxed.

Getting a glass of juice from the fridge, you padded over to your table and sat down before your computer. You kept up with the latest news in kpop, mostly because you loved writing songs and one day wished to have one of your songs performed on a grand stage. It would have been great if Himchan could do one of your songs when you finally wrote one by yourself without the help of your mentor, but you knew for a fact that Yongguk wrote the songs for their band and there was no way the two of you would ever work together.

Speaking of Yongguk…

Your eyes lingered over his name on your screen. He had made his solo debut with a song called ‘I Remember’, featuring Yang Yoseob from Beast. Seeing his name caused a flash of anger to rise within you, but curiosity got the better of you and you clicked on the link to listen to the song.

Even from the first few lines of the song, you could hear the anger and sadness in his voice, and you remembered why you had fallen for him. There was always a certain kind of sadness deep within him despite his cheerful and happy exterior. You were the same. Even when everything was happy and perfect, you always had these nights when you would feel like the loneliest person in the world, and you felt sad without knowing what about. You even had this theory that it was some residual sadness left behind from some intense suffering in a past life, but accepted it as a condition of melancholy that all artists had. Even in the happiest times of your relationship, you remembered having these moments when you would need to disappear for a while and spend time alone with your thoughts, and Yongguk was the same. When you found each other, it was like the meeting of two souls that were meant for each other, and you had fallen hard and fast. Alas, even the brightest stars burn out eventually.

You remembered the days when the two of you would write together. He was always into rap and hiphop and had a musical sense, but you thought of yourself more as a poet. It was him who got you to love music and to imagine your poetry as songs that could be performed. The two of you used to spend hours laughing over him taking your poetry and ruining it with his beatboxing and rapping, making everything you wrote sound ridiculous.

“It’s not about me, is it?” you thought to yourself as the song progressed. Having drifted into a reverie, you restarted the song again and paid attention to the lyrics this time.

I will remember all of our past days, how you played me


I completely changed because of you


I don’t smile anymore like before


I don’t care about love anymore, my heart is all crushed

It sounded like something he would have said about you, but it’s been two years. Even though he obviously still hated you, he could have had other relationships in the past two years, and some of them could have ended badly right? It did strike a chord within you, though. You felt partly guilty for how things had turned out, but also slightly indignant that he could be accusing you of being so heartless.

Seeing that there was also a music video, you went against your better judgment and clicked on it.

Without even realizing it, a burning hot tear rolled down your cheek. It was about you.

Towards the end of your relationship when the fights got bad, you used to get physically violent with him. It was never anything serious, and you knew your hits never really hurt him since he was much stronger than you. Throwing stuff was totally a habit you had, and once, when you were fighting over the guy that was trying to steal you from Yongguk and the accusations were getting particularly hurtful, you had slapped him. It was only once, and you regretted it immediately after you did it. He never hit you back, but there would be some inevitable shoving whenever he tried to fend off your hits. Usually the fighting resulted in tears, name-calling and makeup instead of rational discussions, which was why the problems only snowballed instead of being solved.

What was most painful was the scene where the guy hugged the girl from the back, and the two of them looked at their hands in the light of the sun. You remember doing that with Yongguk once, in the aftermath of that huge fight, and you were musing over how you had actually been so angry that you slapped him. And he had laced his fingers with yours and made you promise never to do that again. Come to think of it, he had tolerated a lot of your willfulness and bad temper back then, and he always calmed down and apologized first.

As fast as the tears of sadness had come, it disappeared and was quickly replaced with a boiling anger. No matter what happened and who was in the wrong, how could he have put something so private out in the open like that? How could he use these memories for fame and fortune?

Hands trembling, you reached for your phone and speed-dialed your brother. He picked up quite quickly, but before he could even greet you, you said through clenched teeth, “Where are you? Are you with Bang Yongguk?”

“We’re at the dorms, why?”

“I’m coming over.”

“Why? Hey, are you crying? Hana—”

You hung up on him, grabbed your car keys and left the house without hesitation. Barely minutes later, you were banging on their door.

Himchan answered the door, and was surprised to see the expression of fury on your face. “Why? What’s wrong with you?”

“Noona!”

You heard one of the boys greet you, but you ignored everyone as your eyes caught sight of one person, sitting on the couch with that insolent look on his face. Making a beeline for him, you grabbed the front of his sweatshirt. Surprised, he stood up, eyes widening.

“Is that song about me?” you asked, your voice soft but menacing.

“What?”

“Is. That. Song. About. Me?” you repeated slowly, louder this time, as if you were speaking to a mentally challenged kid.

There was a moment of silence, as he looked you directly in the eye. It was clear he understood what you were referring to. Then he smirked and pried your hand from his shirt. “Yes. So what?”

You couldn’t control your anger. You never could. Almost automatically, you slapped him across the face.

The whole apartment froze. Himchan’s hand flew up to cover his open mouth. It would almost have been comical, if not for the angry tears streaming down your face.