N O Y A D E

first

***

2 months from now

2014

Beyond the glass panes of the window the table is reared up against, buttery afternoon sunlight streams in, catching the strands of her hair and exposing the subtle red undertones; she must have gotten it redyed, he thinks absently. I wonder if she's working again.

"Am I late?" Soojung asks, more out of courtesy than the fact that she actually cares.

Sehun shakes his head, for the same reason that she asked her question. "No, no, don't worry about it." He smiles, hoping she'll smile back. "Thanks for coming to see me."

***

2 months before now

2013

'Model Gone Off The Rails,' the newspaper headline sings, and while the public tsks and declare they expected nothing else, the cameras are in a frenzy, and Krystal finds herself herded  by a wall of bodyguards and yelling managers into cars with death dark windows faster than she can insult the president.

"You need help," her manager says firmly from the driver's seat. "A therapist."

"It wasn't even a breakdown," Krystal insists. "It's not a big a deal as everyone is making it out to be."

"Oh, so you didn't mean to push your mother like that in public and threaten to kill her?"

Krystal's eyes flare. "She's not my mother."

"So you say."

"So I know," she retorts. Her voice quietens as her eyes move to her lap. "I found the results of her medicals. She can't have children."

There is silence for a time, then her manager sighs. "You're lucky she didn't press charges."

"Lucky?" Krystal snorts. "My career is over."

Another sigh. "Maybe this is what you need. You know, a break. A chance to just settle down and think about where you want your life to go."

Krystal stares at the back of his head, knowing that her manager more than anyone else can feel the way her eyes burn through everything. "My life is either going straight up or straight down, and it's not changing course until I die," she says. "There is no middle ground."

"You're not going up or down, Krystal. Where you are right now is ground zero. You're not going anywhere until you decide to start again."

Before she can reply, a photographer with a camera the size of an elephant head manages to get right up to her window, clicking away like crazy. Krystal flashes a crucifying smile, letting him get a few in, then gives him a shot of her middle finger.

***

"Tell me about yourself."

Sehun steeples his fingers and looks across the wood at the boy opposite him. All he gets is a look of insolence, halfway to a sneer, for his troubles, and: "Let me guess. After I tell you about myself, you're going to tell me to find an outlet for my frustration. To write in a notebook maybe, or write a letter to whoever I'm angry at, and that's supposed to solve everything." The sneer is real now. "Eventually."

"No, I wasn't planning on saying any of that," Sehun says, nonplussed. "Actually, I was hoping you'd just tell me everything on your mind instead of writing it down."

The boy—not even a boy anymore, Sehun thinks— quivers, as if electrified. "I don't trust you."

"Daehyun," Sehun says. "Speaking is not about trusting. If everyone chose not to speak because they didn't trust those around them, there would be an epidemic of silence."

"I don't mind silence."

"Silence won't get you anywhere."

Daehyun gives him a frown, as if to balance the lack of emotion in Sehun's face. "What if I don't want to go anywhere?"

"You do," Sehun presses. "I'm not saying that because I'm assuming I know you better than you know yourself— I don't. I'm saying it because everyone wants to go somewhere." He lowers his voice. "I'm sure you don't want to stay in the same place you are now."

It's a small allusion, maybe not even a jab at the eye of the storm in Daehyun's mind, but he flinches, anyway. "What's in it for me?" Daehyun says, eyes narrowing, but the cracks in his self-confidence are splitting, widening. And Sehun can see it.

For the first time since they'd met, Sehun smiles. "Everything."

"And for you?"

 Sehun leans back, spreading his arms wide. "Nothing at all."

For a moment, the steady crawling of Daehyun's trust halts. "What about the money?"

"Money isn't everything." Sehun flashes another smile, carrying the depth of both sadness and happiness; of years lived, and years lost to if's and maybe's. Daehyun may be closed off to others, but he isn't closed off to the level of emotions, especially this kind; feelings lost and feelings endured.

Just like that, Daehyun cracks and tells Sehun about what happened eight years ago.

*

When Sehun comes out of the room, three people are crying: Daehyun, Sehun, and the man who'd been standing outside, watching the whole thing through a two-way glass panel.

Without warning Sehun gets his hand shaken firmly, thankfully, by the man, who is smaller than Daehyun, but bigger in expression.

"I've never seen or heard him open up like that, not to anyone." The man shakes his head, impressed beyond further words of praise. "I'm hiring you. You start tomorrow."

***

"This season, myself and the designers at the House of Jung have prepared a new collection that will not only capture the attention of the general public, but will also reaffirm our status as one of the top brands in the fashion industry; a title we have laid rightful claim to for more than two consecutive decades."

The voice announcing this is both loud and composed, a tone that can only come from a person who craves attention and knows that their demands will be met without effort. In front of her audience− suited board members of different companies, wealthy clients, sponsors, high-collared editors, and the most renowned journalists− Kwon Boa pauses for effect, smoothing a my-salary-has-one-more-zero-than-yours smile onto her thin lips. At that moment, a new audience member slips into the room.

The double doors are closed discreetly behind the newcomer, but while everyone else misses her entrance, Boa does not. Even if she had not seen the person enter, it's clear from the way the security team turn a blind eye that it can only be one person: her daughter.

Step-daughter.

Slowly, Jung Sooyeon steps out from the shadows clinging to the walls of the room, taking the seat of someone who hadn't shown up. Boa sweeps her eyes away, back across the room, eventually returning to her step-daughter for the briefest of moments; it's long enough for her to see that Sooyeon has noticed. And she is seething.

*

By the time all the other members of the audience have cleared off and Sooyeon is alone with Boa in the conference hall, she has transcended rage, submerging herself in a dangerous calm. During the presentation, she had caught more than an eyeful of the way the audience was visually engaged, how the reporters typed, scribbled and tapped away on notepads or electronic devices, how the high-collars had whispered furiously to their assistants, who had stayed behind afterwards to place orders.

There can be no denial from anyone, least of all Sooyeon, that the presentation was constructed around a fresh concept. Compared to a usual presentation that would be given by her father, this one was obviously made by someone new; someone younger.

And it was— just not by Boa.

"How dare you," Sooyeon calls out shamelessly the moment Boa looks up from straightening her cue cards. "I planned that presentation. Hell, I was supposed to present it."

"Sooyeon," Boa murmurs. "Lovely to see you here."

Sooyeon's eyes narrow. "You sly fox," she spits. "You moved up the presentation time so I'd miss it. So you could present it."

"The world moves faster than you think, darling," Boa says smoothly. "You need to learn to keep up."

"It's not a matter of keeping up so much as it is expecting to be deceived, I see."

Boa smiles, all narrow lips and calculating eyes. "And I see you're already learning."

"You could have at least credited me."

A shrug. "Your father asked me to involve you, and so I did," Boa says. "You planned it all, and it was perfect. Perfect enough for me to use. No one said anything about credit."

"Oh, so you count plagiarism as involving me, do you?" She doesn't add that her father would love to hear about this, because she doesn't know what that man wants anymore. Sooyeon laughs bitterly. "Anything to push the company forward, right?"

"We may have been set back several years before," Boa says, with a pointed tone at the end of the sentence, "but we have proved that we will move forward, and we will build on the success our founder−" again, another pointed dig−"brought us. So yes, whatever needs to push the company forward, I will do."

Sooyeon struggles to keep her cool. While her brother is infamous for displaying almost a mirror image of Boa's chilling and scheming, she is all short temper and mouth. "When you're dead and gone with my father, it'll be me who inherits the company. Not Yunho— everyone knows he has no patience or care for this business. Me. People have to see what I can do; they have to be convinced that I am capable. I wanted to show them what I could do, but I didn't get the chance tonight because of you."

"That was the idea." Boa shrugs. "Darling, our wants will always clash with others'— yours and mine most violently and most often."

*

The sound of a well-oiled door swinging shut isn't typically a noise that's harsh on the eardrums, but if, like Sooyeon, you live with a moody brother who needs to be watched, it's audible enough.

Padded footsteps (socks, she thinks) coming down the hall register in Sooyeon's hearing. She relaxes when the weight and rhythm of them invokes recognition in her mind, settling her shoulder blades back up against the headboard.

Sooyeon is already well back into her book when the bedroom door opens. "Where were you?" she asks without looking up. "Daehyun didn't know where you were. That can only mean you didn't want anyone to know where you would be."

In the doorway, her husband flashes her his signature lopsided smile, one corner of his mouth lifting upwards a little higher than the other. He steps into the room, shrugging his jacket off and falling into his before-bed routine. "Would it interest you to know that I took Daehyun's new shrink out to dinner?"

Sooyeon raises her eyebrows, turning a page. Expressionless. "I figured it wouldn't be long till you finally got sick of me and found a replacement. But please, Junmyeon—tell me she is just as beautiful as I am."

For a moment, Junmyeon stares, halfway into unlooping his scarf, but then she finally lifts her eyes, and they're smiling. He shakes his head, secretly relieved. "It's not a she," he says. "The new shrink is a man."

"Oh?" Sooyeon sounds as though she's beginning to lose interest now, and rightfully so. Junmyeon has gone through these motions more times than she cares to count, though to his honour, he's held out longer than her. It's been years since she gave up on Daehyun.  

"Hear me out," Junmyeon says, a hint of pleading in his tone. "I got it right this time."

Sooyeon narrows her eyes. "How are you so sure?"

"Because," Junmyeon says, his lips out of habit, out of nervousness, "Daehyun told him everything. Even what happened... you know."

His wife raises her eyebrows again, but higher than the last time.

"I was thinking of bringing him here tomorrow," Junmyeon continues, pleased by her reaction. "I want you to meet him, and I also want to show him around so he's more familiar with the environment he'll be working in."

Sooyeon tries to hide her smile, and fails. She can't remember the last time Junmyeon was this keen, this sure. "You're serious about this."

Junmyeon nods. "Dead serious."

"All right," Sooyeon says, ready to give in. She has to admit she is curious. "What's his name, then?"

"Oh Sehun."

Sooyeon drops her book.

***

Jung Yunho thinks the bane of his existence may just be traffic lights.

Even with all the money in the world, all the money he has, he can't do anything to influence the changing of the lights, to make the red turn green on a whim. It's nearing the transition between evening and night, and he is more exhausted than he cares to admit.

Out of boredom, his head swivels to the left and he sights an open-air restaurant sprawled on the pavement between a clothes boutique and the street corner. Yunho is about to look away when something catches his away— or rather, someone.

Standing in the line at the reception booth of the restaurant is a tall, young man and though Yunho can only see the back of him, there is something eerily familiar about the set of his shoulders and his lanky, million-mile legs, even the way he holds his arms, like he's afraid of knocking them into anything around him. At first, Yunho shrugs it off, thinking it must just be the fatigue of the day setting in, but he finds that he can't look away, even after he considers how strange it is to stare at the back view of someone like this, with this much intensity.

The traffic light finally turns green, and Yunho drives ahead, but instead of continuing straight, he turns left and parks at the curb closest to the restaurant. When he looks back up at the restaurant again, he sees that the man is disappearing into the restaurant, and he quickly unbuckles, ready to get out of the car—

And then his phone rings.

Yunho growls under his breath, not even bothering to check the caller ID before he answers. "What?"

"I would have thought someone of your age, or at least of your status, would have learnt manners by now," a voice answers coolly. "But maybe that is too much to expect, knowing you."

Yunho runs a hand over his face, recognising the tone of his step-mother, Boa. "Are you ever not a ?"

"I could ask the same of you."

"Ha ha," Yunho says dully. He looks up to find that the man is gone, completely out of sight now. He hisses under his breath, knowing it is beyond his patience now to get into the restaurant and seek him out. And even then, he thinks, the man could turn out to be just another nobody. "Why did you call?"

"You were aware of my presentation this morning, yes?"

"Mm," Yunho grunts. "What of it?"

"Did you tell Sooyeon I'd changed the time?"

"No. You changed the time?" he parrots.

"Ah."

Yunho can sense her ready to hang up. "Why?" he asks sharply. "What's this about?"

"Oh, it's none of your concern," Boa says in her slippery tongue, and Yunho realises too late that for the past minute or so, she had let her guard down a little. Or maybe it had been torn down by something else he had sensed— irritation, and beneath that, fear. "I don't want anyone hearing of this conversation, especially not Sooyeon. Do you understand?"

Yunho rolls his eyes, mildly irritated. God knows there isn't anything worth a cent under the sun that he wants to say to his sister. "Sure, Mom."

He can almost hear her stiffen. "Don't call me that."

"Well, that's what you are, isn't it?" And before she can reply, Yunho hangs up, clutching the steering wheel till his knuckles turn white.

A/N: (7/07/14) Woooow, I haven't updated this in a year + almost two months! I meant to write more earlier, but then I sort of lost the will and time (but never the interest).  So I had some time recently and I've been fleshing out this story because Tangerine Express is coming to an end and I want to work on/possibly finish this story because the ideas I have for it are ones I don't want to abandon. I'm sorry for the really long wait, and for giving you a really short first chapter that is essentially another prologue. Thanks for choosing to read, anyway :)

Okay, concerning the story: after the 2 months before now section, everything in the story is happening now (i.e. in the present) unless stated otherwise. In this chapter, we begin to see just what kind of relationships the main characters have with each other-- though I've actually left the most important relationships out for now. You'll see by the end of the story (if I finish) which relationships are the ones I consider to be most important.