People think there’s something going on between the two of you, that the way you look at each other or disregard each other’s personal space must mean something. There are photos, videos, interviews in endless circulation, mascarading as evidence of your 'special bond'. You’ve seen some of them and heard about more, archiving every touch, every smile, every moment of eye contact and rearranging the puzzle pieces so that the picture looks like love.

They’ve got it completely wrong of course. They should have started with love and worked backwards, they should have disassembled the puzzle piece by piece until it could be laid out in almost unrelated fragments. There are moments when the scattered shards fall into line in just the right way that you might see something real there, but it’s not love, it could never be love. The bright lights of the stage and the makeup room have blinded everyone but the two of you to that uncomfortably obvious reality.

Oh how he witters on!

You know that that’s really what does it, they catch hold of a stray ‘saranghae’ in amongst a tumble of noise and it’s the only thing they remember. And here you have to pause because no matter how many times you remind yourself that he doesn't mean it you’re still stuck on ‘saranghae’ and through his smokescreen of words you realise it's the only thing that stands out. You feel your breath trip and you hold your heart down.

There were mornings, years ago now, when you would find yourself wrapped around him, even as he tried to run away from you amid the ocean of your shared duvet. He would wake and look for the briefest of seconds as if he were happy you were there, then he’d shove you off hard enough for the elbow to your ribs to hurt and, cursing up a storm about boundaries, he’d leave.

You never could understand why he didn’t just kick you out, except that it made for a good story.

Some days you don’t know how he does it, because it doesn’t seem possible that he’s missed you staring at him out of the corner of your eye for all these years, not sure if you should say anything, not sure if there’s anything to say. You want to believe that there’s a shared strength between the two of you that holds back the tide and catches you both before you let your emotions become tangible, but you have to admit that when you see him flirting with your backup dancers or hiding secret smiles as he texts in the back of the van that it looks like he just doesn’t care.

You steal his phone and don’t recognise half the names he has logged, accompanied by pictures of pretty girls in night clubs and you don’t know if it bothers you more that he’s meeting them or that he never takes you along to meet them too. His life is documented haphazardly in his photos and you don’t like the way your stomach clenches you when you see you aren’t in any of them.

He steals your phone and changes the language to Spanish – it takes you a week to find someone who can help you change it back.

The problem with the two of you is that you’re just too obvious. You see the photos, the videos, the endless reactions and interactions that you’ve accumulated over the years and can’t understand where it all goes behind closed doors. It can’t be nothing, it’s too much for it to be nothing, but when you see him slip out the front door, late at night, hunched over like he’s trying not to be noticed, the fourth wall shatters and the act is all that’s left. You've let it get too good to be true and you're not sure that that's a bad thing.

It takes more effort than you want it to not to ask him why he moved in with you, and you don’t want to hear why he moved out. You used to watch sappy romantic movies together, because he always thought the girls were pretty and because you wanted to believe that love is crafted by cameras and script writers and costumes and make up. A man and a woman kiss on a beach, a mountain, in their kitchen, at their wedding and you turn to him, but his attention is anywhere but on you.

“In another life, that could have been us!” You hope it sounds like a joke, but you also hope that he understands what you’re really trying to say.

He snorts and his eyes don’t leave the television, “as if”.

He’s right of course, he’s right far more of the time than anyone gives him credit for. It takes you years to work out that it doesn’t matter where you start from, in this life or any other, working backwards from love will never get you any closer to the real thing.

“This is Jiyong-hyeong! He’s amazing, I love him!” he babbles for the amusement of the masses. You smile endearingly but shrug him off because it’s easier this way, you don’t have to suffer his excitement and everyone else gets the photos and the videos as ‘proof’ of how close the two of you are.

You watch the footage at home, fit it in among the collage of other such incidents where you seemed too close to not be touching and take a step back. You have to admit, it looks an awful lot like love.