In Constant Stars
15 -- a l l  a b o u t  u s

Heeyoung skipped down the stairs after excusing herself to me. She sat down at a table we never came near to, subtly brushing her arm against that of the boy next to her. It was the same guy she’d had her eyes on during Zelo’s surprise party. The fact that it had turned out like this didn’t surprise me. The fact that she’d soon come to realise he wasn’t going to entertain her for too long wouldn’t surprise me either.

But for now I let her have her way as I mused over what I’d get from the canteen. Zelo, mother and I had had a good weekend, celebrating Zelo’s birthday happily. Uncle Kazu had come by for a visit as he was here on a business trip, and even some of our relatives from our father’s side had called to wish Zelo a happy birthday. It could’ve been very awkward conversations, but they were with warm-heartening intentions and that alone made the three of us feel relieved.

So I stood at the entrance to the canteen, wondering where I would sit now that I was alone, when from both sides two boys approached me.

“Heh. Did she ditch you?” Daehyun’s amused voice sounded. He had his hands placed in his pockets almost a bit too casually. His hair was a mess as usual and his eyes were trained on my best friend’s back.

I shrugged as Youngjae said with a grin, showing that he too knew there wasn’t much to be done about Heeyoung’s behaviour anyway: “Well, she’s always been like this. I can’t say I’m surprised. Wanna join us at our table?”

Well, that idea did seem more appealing to me than sitting by myself at a table, though I was pretty used to that by now too. Heeyoung did this often and most of the times she’d be back at our usual table before lunch period would be over. Sometimes I wondered if that was because she didn’t want to leave me by myself, but I supposed she wouldn’t have to worry over that if I joined others at their tables.

So I did accept Youngjae’s offer and wound up sitting across Daehyun and next to Himchan, to the delight of the latter. While the flamboyant playboy recited all his cheesy pick-up lines to me – and admittedly, I even chuckled once or twice – I couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that Daehyun was looking at me closely all the while, even though I’d only catch him eating every time I looked his way. Usually this would have unnerved me terribly, but things had changed after Friday night.

“We don’t need to talk about this if you don’t want to,” he said softly when I stepped back.

I looked away. “I don’t want to.”

“That’s fine by me. Are you ready to go back in?”

By that point I was convinced I probably wouldn’t be ready to get back to the party at any moment of the evening, so I might as well just go back in the quickest I could, to get away from Daehyun. Without responding, I went back inside, with him following just behind. He didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was giving him the cold shoulder again.

I stopped just at the opening, second thoughts haunting my mind. I could easily leave. That was an option too, wasn’t it? I could come up with an excuse like how I wasn’t feeling well just so I could get away. It wouldn’t even really be a lie because I was actually feeling horrible.

Before I could turn around, however, one of his hands was touching my shoulder, almost as though he knew what was going through my mind and he wanted to stop me from escaping. If it were up to Daehyun, tonight would be the night that I’d confront all of my fears and blocks and get on with my life. As if things were as simple as that.

But this wasn’t up to Daehyun; this was up to me. And my gut feeling was telling me that I’d have my heart broken the moment I would see Zelo again. I could already imagine what his expression would look like. Knowing him, he’d probably fake a smile, pretend that everything was all good like he and I had been doing for a while and live on until at some point one of us would break down again. And however cowardly this might be, I was afraid that maybe that method was the least painful of all. Knowing that didn’t make accepting it any easier.

“So?” Daehyun’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “I get that you like being alone with me and all, but I was kind of hoping to rejoin that party at least before I die of age.”

A part of me suspected that he was saying insensitive things just to break my discomfort, probably hoping that I’d be distracted. It didn’t work, but I admired his attempt.

“You spend too much time around Himchan,” I said curtly before stepping inside. I barely managed to hear him chuckle before the blasting music greeted us.

I learned a few things during lunch that day. For example, Daehyun’s love for food went deep. Really deep. He didn’t let people touch it without permission, though it wasn’t like he gave anyone permission to touch it to begin with. Apart from that, he stuck to very specific orders of eating the dishes. Though all of his friends were long used to his odd quirks, I looked on with big, horrified eyes as he ate.

“Are you sure that all that food wasn’t supposed to feed an army or something?”

“Don’t mind him,” Youngjae, who was sitting next to him, said without looking up. “One day he’ll realise his metabolism is failing him and he’ll wake up fat.”

Daehyun himself was too absorbed by eating to actually respond. I wasn’t sure I even wanted him to speak up with all the food in his mouth and all.

“Yup,” my brother’s voice sounded from the other side of the table, “don’t mind him. You actually get used to it over time.” Zelo stuck out his head so we could look at each other, and with mixed feelings I mirrored his smile.

“Oh, noona, there you are!”

I smiled stiffly and walked over, Daehyun following behind. Everyone was too busy fawning over the delicious-looking cake that Himchan had carried in to comment on the fact that Daehyun and I had mysteriously disappeared off to somewhere. It was just Zelo noticing us and waving us over when we entered.

“Auntie Boyoung made it, didn’t she? I can recognise her cakes from miles away.”

Instead of having to say something to that myself, Daehyun spoke up: “She made sure to put in a lot of strawberries because she knows you like ‘em. Told me so about five times so I wouldn’t forget to tell you.”

“Haha, sounds like something she would do.”

I stayed at the side quietly and watched on how Heeyoung distributed little cardboard disks with varying-sized pieces of cake. Despite the fact that it hadn’t been as big as we’d originally wanted, this would probably be enough to let everyone have a piece.

“I’ll get us a piece too,” Daehyun muttered from my side and made his way to the table where Himchan and Heeyoung stood, leaving me with Zelo. My little brother already had his own piece, though he hadn’t had a bite yet.

“Zelo,” I said quietly – so quietly that my voice should have been drowned away by the background music. But Zelo was long used to my soft-spoken character and caught on easily.

“Yeah?”

“If you want to work somewhere part-time, you should do it.”

Apart from the fact that this came out extremely patronising, like I was his parent, I was also pretty sure this was a stupid thing to do. Allowing him to work could potentially cause him to over-work, injure himself or neglect his schoolwork, all of which alerted my instincts not to let him do it. Every second that passed after I’d said this was another second filled with distinctive worry.

Depending on each other isn’t easy. I’d always been more of a solo player than a member of a team and admittedly I liked it that way. I worked best and most efficiently on my own and I felt that the way I handled things was best uninfluenced by others’ thinking. And that’s why handing over this responsibility to Zelo was so hard. As much as I had a brother complex, this wasn’t just about Zelo.

This was also so very much about me.

It wasn’t like I thought that Zelo would block me or drag me down. Rather, I thought maybe he would come to realise this was just how things were going to be from now on. This was just going to be how we were going to survive and he would see all of the faults in that way of living, and therefore also all of the faults in the way I would try to handle that. If something went wrong, there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to fix it and I couldn’t expect him to either. The risks were so big and I’d rather take them on myself than together with him.

But now it was out and there was no way to take back those words. Daehyun, undoubtedly, would be surprised to see this. Of course he would – I’d been half-crying on his shoulders exactly because I didn’t want this to happen and then I let it happen a few minutes after. This went against all of my initial principles. Crazy.

“Oh,” Zelo uttered then. His pale complex seemed even more ghastly in the half-lit darkness. His eyes were even harder to read than usually. To me, he was at his most unpredictable. Then, while motioning to our surroundings with his free hand, he stammered: “I, eh, I didn’t expect this… actually. I didn’t expect any of this to happen tonight.”

“Well, it did…” I said lamely.

What was this response supposed to mean? He didn’t make sense. Did he want this or not? Was he having second thoughts?

Zelo looked up at someone approaching us from the crowd and I followed his gaze. Daehyun was wearing a slightly surprised expression. He was holding two cardboard plates with cake. One of the plastic forks was on its tipping point of dropping off the plate, so I moved forward to push it back a little. All the while a muted exchange was going on between my brother and Daehyun, like a back-and-forth bickering communicated by gazes. I imagined it to be a little like this:

Zelo: You told her what I said in the kitchen?

Daehyun: Not exactly…

Zelo: What’s that? Her suddenly telling me that I can have a job now is no coincidence, is it?

Daehyun: Well, to be honest…

After a sigh and a few disapproving glances in Daehyun’s direction, Zelo finally seemed to understand the meaning of my words. The beaming smile following after didn’t disappoint.

“Wait, so you’re saying you’re going to leave a few things to me too, right?”

I tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. It was going to be painful adjusting to this new way of living. “More or less.”

“You’re saying you’re going to try not to over-work yourself and trust me a little too, right?”

This, for some reason, startled me, even though this was actually the basic implication of my suggestion. If he were to start working, that’d mean I’d have less pressure on me. Our earnings combined could pay for our household fees and I would be able to save more for my college tuition.

But the way he’d phrased this, and made this all about me instead of all about him like I’d expected him to, had formed itself into a little bubble of happiness inside of me. Even though I’d known this after the argument in Heeyoung’s kitchen, I still thought maybe he was saying that to reassure me. But now, even after handing over this pressure for us both to carry, I knew it wasn’t just a reassurance. It was a promise. This two-way communication, as compared to the solitude we both resided in a month ago, was a kind of gentleness I had only experienced a long time ago, before our family became the way it was. Faced with a gesture so familiar, I couldn’t suppress the smile forming on my lips.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

And then, when Zelo was dragged off by still-hyper Youngjae to look at some of the lights (‘It’s so shiny, you have to see it!’ – by now Himchan had put in money betting that Youngjae had sniffed something prior to coming here, which was later proved to be false), Dae nudged me softly. “How do you feel after that?”

“Eh,” I chewed on the cake as I thought about the question. Daehyun waited patiently. “Like I’ve just handed two of my limbs over to Zelo.”

“Oh,” the response sounded drily. “ for you then.”

As another rare moment that seemed to happen more and more often, we shared a similar grin.

“Seriously though, I feel relieved right now. Kind of. Inexplicably. Because I really, really didn’t want to do this, but I still did and I don’t even know why. My biggest fear is waking up tomorrow morning and regretting this whole night first thing because of what happened just now.”

Daehyun glanced down at me as he sincerely said: “Don’t do that. You’ve done a couple incredible things tonight; you shouldn’t regret that.”

And a secret part of me knew that both of us were acting extremely out of character that evening, but I supposed those kinds of things just happened when you’re still overridden by the joy of finding acceptance, finally. Maybe what I’d done was incredible – it was kind of hard to judge myself – but something even more extraordinary happened that moment.

I felt like, instead of this being all about me, or all about Zelo, this was all about us. And that encompassed Daehyun too.

“By the way,” Youngjae suddenly said, “I heard Minhyuk hyung came by on Friday too? I didn’t see him even once.”

“Kind of hard when you’re all high on crack, huh?” Himchan muttered under his breath, though with a suggestive smirk to his friend, who kicked him under the table.

“Can you drop that already? I just don’t respond well to sugar, jeez,” Youngjae stated with a frown, to which many of us at the table couldn’t help but roll our eyes. We had all been eyewitnesses to that during the surprise party. “Anyway, Minhyuk?”

“I saw him,” Jongup said enthusiastically. “He gave Zelo a set of new wheels for his board.”

My brother nodded with equal delight. “Spitfires, with a really neat design too.”

As the two of them launched into a discussion about the best brand of wheels, Himchan turned his back on them and looked me in the eyes, saying: “What’s the deal between you and Minhyuk, Nana?” His eyebrows were raised and a mischievous twinkle was apparent in his eyes. The fact that his hair was styled up that day added all the more to the prankster vibe I was getting from him that moment.

“What do you mean, ‘deal’?”

I was met with an exasperated sigh identical to my best friend’s. Himchan and Heeyoung were too alike in some moments; it was starting to freak me out a little. “You know what I mean.”

Before I got the chance to retort, Daehyun suddenly seemed to be done eating finally and answered in my stead: “They used to date.” For good measure he even added a ‘Duh’ to that, even though he hadn’t known the truth much earlier than Himchan.

Daehyun’s eyes were narrowed as he listened to our conversation and I knew that he was doing his own observing thing again. Minhyuk was explaining his schedule of that day to me and I was smiling seeing how much he was enjoying himself as a trainee. Somewhere along the line we’d taken some steps forward so we could hear each other better over the music, but it didn’t seem to register with either of us until Daehyun softly let out an awkward cough.

Oops. It was too easy falling back into the same familiar patterns with Minhyuk. I had to be careful.

“You sure the two of you aren’t dating anymore?” Daehyun asked mockingly when Minhyuk left us for a bit to congratulate Zelo and give him his present. When Minhyuk had just come in and given me a quick one-armed hug, Daehyun seemed very surprised to see the distance. And that was why I had to explain to him in a moment of utter awkwardness that Minhyuk and I were not dating. “Sure seemed that way to me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like him that way anymore… Plus, he’s too busy to have a girlfriend now. You heard him. Wake up at five o’clock, dance practice the entire morning, vocal lessons in the afternoon and even more dance practice after dinner? There’s no time for dating in there.”

“Well, you say you don’t like him anymore…”

But Daehyun never finished his sentence and left me hanging that way. Even when I insisted that he’d tell me what his original string of thought had entailed, he didn’t want to reveal anything. When Minhyuk came back, Daehyun stuck out his tongue at me over Minhyuk’s shoulder and turned around to talk to some friends from school.

“That’s the guy from the café right? The one Heeyoung asked me about?” Minhyuk asked. “Daehyun.”

“Eh, yeah.”

“Is it just me or is he kinda weird?”

I barely stopped myself from bursting out in laughter. Jung Daehyun was apparently often described as a lot of things, but not with the adjective ‘weird’. “He totally is, but don’t tell him. He’s terribly annoying when disgruntled. But gosh, weird he is. What made you think so?” I recapped the little exchange of words that had happened between the two of them, but there hadn’t been any weird things said. “Oh, was it the staring? I swear he’s even less subtle than Heeyoung when she’s people-watching.”

Minhyuk only nodded. Something in his behaviour seemed to shift that moment, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was that bothered me.

“He does that a lot. I’d like to say that you get used to it, but the truth is that you don’t.”

“… Are you speaking from personal experience?”

My eyes widened as I realised that what I’d just said was pretty odd in itself. Quietly, I averted my eyes and nodded, all the while trying to think up a new topic to talk about.

How unlike me, I realised, it is to blabber about things that usually seemed like pointless chit-chat in my eyes. What would Minhyuk care whether people got used to Daehyun’s stare or not? With the many slip-ups I’d made, I was long convinced that something was off that evening. Or maybe it was because I was off that evening. Both were likely.

Minhyuk’s own off-moment passed too, as his usual joyful smile recovered. “I was just teasing you. Don’t take it to heart, Nana.” He started looking around us, as though looking for someone. “Now where’s my favourite Princess?”

Behind Minhyuk I saw Daehyun chatter with his friends. When our eyes accidentally met, I almost looked away out of surprise, but I caught myself when he raised his plastic cup. I, too, raised mine.

Maybe Daehyun was what made everything about the evening and about me seem off.

Now that was an unsettling thought.

Everyone around the table seemed taken off guard as Daehyun openly expressed his interest in my dating life. Making use of the astonished hush over our table, he got up and announced that he was getting something to drink.

Before he took off, he decided to rub it in some more and, with a humoured grin, asked: “Want me to get you anything, Nana?” This was, of course, anything but a natural question to ask, especially not when he had five other friends who would probably like a drink as well. But this was a moment too golden to pass, so I went along playfully too.

“Oh, actually, I’d really like a coffee.”

Apparently the fact that Jung Daehyun and Choi Nana were having an actual conversation without a single insult thrown in was so astounding that some of our friends even dropped their jaws. Admittedly, Daehyun and I were having more fun with this than either of us would have thought.