In Constant Stars
26 -- s h a m e f u l

“Are you still fighting with Zelo?” he suddenly whispered into my right ear, almost making me jump in surprise. Being in his arms, feeling his warmth and gentleness along with the tension between us, I’d felt like I’d lost some sense of reality. But all of a sudden, he was so close again and everything was incredibly real. I could smell his cologne and it made me more dazed than I wanted to be. Hadn’t he mentioned my brother’s name, I would have probably stayed in an embarrassing daydream for the rest of the evening.

I nodded stiffly and silently prayed that he wouldn’t ask any further. My prayers weren’t heard.

“You should talk to him, Nana. You’ll have to, sooner or later.”

I looked over his shoulder to the table where he had been sitting before. Yongguk was talking to a man he seemed to be familiar with. Jongup and Youngjae were grabbing a quick drink. Zelo wasn’t around. After confirming this, I turned back to him. I couldn’t help the frown on my face. “He’s probably having a fun night. I don’t want to ruin it.”

“You know he hasn’t been having much fun lately. I doubt you could worsen it.”

He wasn’t looking at me when he said this, which was probably why what he’d said sounded worse in my mind than it would have to others. The defensive part of me, the part that usually didn’t want to voice its thoughts aloud, suddenly stepped in and felt that perhaps this was a jab at me. At the fact that I couldn’t take care of my little brother the way I should, and that that was the reason why Zelo constantly seemed to be on the verge of miserable.

“I’d really prefer it if you stayed out of my business.”

It had come out snappier than I had intended it to sound. In fact, it had come out all of a sudden, like a thought I couldn’t suppress from voicing aloud even though I knew I really should keep it to myself. We were both quiet for a long time then, probably both shocked at my attitude. Sure, we got into a lot of arguments, but I never snapped at him, not like that. I wasn’t mean to him that way. We were never nasty to each other – it was a rule.

So this was it for me. I’d had enough of this rollercoaster of emotions during this entire evening. Heeyoung might have found it amusing, but to me it was everything but. Being with Daehyun made me feel restless, snapping at him made me disgusted at myself, thinking about Zelo made me wish I could be uncaring, yet at the same time I didn’t want to be. I didn’t know where I was standing in all of this, nor did I know where I wanted to go. It was too much all at once.

I refused to look at Daehyun when I felt tears threatening to fall. My little brother was a topic I didn’t like touching and he knew that. I had snapped at him out of anger, though not out of anger at him but at myself. And I didn’t want for this evening to end in another fight that I’d start or end by crying again.

I tried to pull back. His hands still held me by my elbows. A part of me wished that he would be angry with me because that was what I deserved, but his expression would probably tell me solely that he was concerned. It would only make me feel guiltier. I swallowed the lump forming in my throat down and pulled away from him, all the way until his solid grip left my arms too. The places he’d touched felt hot. I hated how much that affected me.

“Nana,” I heard him call to me, suddenly sounding so loud. I found my way through the dancing crowd, having much curious staring pointed at my retreating back. He was probably close behind, following me. “Nana, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot, okay?”

And then an arm snuck around my waist from behind and I was pulled back to his chest again. Solid. Warm. Oddly safe.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said again when I looked back at him again. “You’re right. It’s not my business, not really. But I’m trying to help, Nana,” he ducked his head a bit lower so we were almost eye-to-eye. I saw the sincerity shining in his eyes. My lips thinned. “The two of you have been dancing around the pink elephant in the room for too long. It’s not going to help if you keep doing it.”

In that moment I became aware of his hands gripping my arms. He saw my eyes on them and slowly retracted them.

I really wished he didn’t affect me as much as he did.

Hastily and stuttering, I barely managed to say: “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I just– I just need a moment, okay?” Before waiting for his answer, I just turned around and made it a mission to get away from him the quickest I could. I didn’t look back at him standing amongst the dancing crowd even once. I didn’t know what I would see if I did.

“Hey… What are you doing outside?” a familiar voice asked from behind me.

I almost gasped in surprise when the doors to the outside had opened. Turning around, I saw my tall brother closing the glass door swiftly, all the while shooting me a curious glance. I was all alone on the balcony that nobody else had discovered yet. That was, until Zelo had too.

“I eh… I needed some fresh air. Too many people inside,” I said quickly, looking away. I turned back around and leaned against the railing with my elbows. The air was chilly, though not as cold as any December evening would have been. Though my arms were bare to my shoulders, the heat from inside the hotel was still playing at my skin, keeping me warm for a little while.

“Right.” Zelo went to stand next to me, leaving a little space between the two of us. Before an extremely awkward atmosphere could settle, he said: “Daehyun hyung didn’t look too happy with you back there.”

I nervously nibbled on my bottom lip before nodding: “Yeah… Well, he and I never really did get along too well.”

“You say that pretty often, but I’ve always thought that the two of you did just fine.”

I blinked for a moment before I turned back to him with a questioning look. “What?”

He shrugged as he looked up to the moon. The hotel had a great view of the Incheon Bridge, but the floor we were on right now was not located high enough for us to overview the rest of the tall buildings. However, we could see light from around the bridge brightening the dark sky like an aurora.

“I mean, from what I’ve seen, at least… Well, it was always kind of like you and Daehyun hyung had some kind of mutual understanding just by looking at each other or something. You didn’t talk much to any of my friends back when you first met them, anyway, but it was like you and Daehyun kind of… understood each other? Even though you didn’t talk at all? I dunno, I’m not good at this deep stuff.”

“I can’t follow.”

He shrugged. “I mean... the two of you were just different from the rest, is all. It wasn’t that noticeable or anything, but it just felt like everything was natural. Just the way it was supposed to be.”

“Are you trying to say that our arguing was natural?” I asked, though I couldn’t help the knowing grin tugging at my lips.

He gave me a cheeky grin for a moment, his eyes telling me that we both kind of knew what he was talking about, despite his clumsy wording. His blonde hair shone from the light coming from the ball room inside. I couldn’t see much of the left half of his face because of the darkness cast upon us, all except for the party going on inside. Nonetheless I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere along the line, my baby brother had grown up to be more like a man. He was taller than me, he could do things fine by himself and, as I had recently realized, he sometimes simply knew things better than I did.

“Junhong,” I breathed.

He looked surprised at me for suddenly calling him by his given name. Ever since Dad had left, I felt like he might hurt from hearing me calling him by the name only my Dad had insisted on using. When Zelo came home one day and shouted that he wanted to be called Zelo from that day on, my mother and I had laughingly agreed, thinking it was a phase. It turned out it was a name that defined his entire being. Proud, brave and strong Zelo. He was invincible. And he was my little brother. The one I had to start letting go of.

“What is it?” he asked, a questioning look visible in his eyes.

“I know you hate this, but can you let me pat your head one more time?”

Usually he would complain incessantly whenever I made a move to pat him on his head. But this time, something seemed to dawn on him about this situation. He silently lowered his head for me and, with a chuckle, I patted him softly on his head.

“I promise I won’t do that anymore, because I know how much you hate it when I do that,” I said with a smile. When he looked back at me again, my smile faded away a bit, as did his. I took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Junhong. For everything. And I’m not just apologizing because I suspect you of telling Mum to let us go on this trip.”

He chuckled softly. “I thought you’d figure that out.”

We stayed quiet for a while before I felt like there was more that I needed to say, so that maybe, maybe he’d understand a little. Zelo was understanding, but he needed to know how and why.

“I think what upset me the most about finding out that you were calling Dad was that it kind of felt like… like I’d lost you a little.” I paused and found myself playing with my hands. I could sense that Zelo purposely didn’t speak up during this silence because he knew I needed to gather the words for myself before I continued: “Because you needed to talk and I hadn’t been there for you when you needed someone to talk to, so you went to Dad. And I wasn’t sure if I could deal with that after he left us and while Mum was all absent.”

His gaze dropped to the ground and he nodded slowly.

“I know. Daehyun hyung said that too and I get it, noona, I really do, because that’s how I would have seen it too. I wouldn’t have been able to keep going after he left if you hadn’t been there. But I wanted to talk about him and when I realised that I couldn’t do that with you or with Mum… I figured my only option would be talking to him. It wasn’t for his sake… it was just for mine.

“I’m not saying that you should talk to him too, noona. I don’t think there’s a point to that as long as you don’t think that you would need to talk. He won’t tell me anything. Everything we say to each other is always a repetition one way or the other from all the other conversations we have,” he said, gazing up at the lights dancing in the distance. “Sometimes it just helps me, knowing that he’ll at least speak to me now.”

I breathed in deeply and felt the painful lump in my throat again that made everything just a little harder. I looked away so Zelo couldn’t see that I was blinking back my tears.

“I’m so sorry,” I could barely bring out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make things easier for you. I just can’t bring myself to talk to him, still.”

There wasn’t much more that we could say than that. We were siblings. It was as simple as that. The fact that Zelo had been talking to our father didn’t mean that all of a sudden things were perfect again. It didn’t mean that Zelo had forgiven him. Our Dad left us. Our Mum wasn’t really around either. For a long while, we’d only had each other. After all that, learning that even a relationship like ours could be so fragile was even more painful, but that didn’t mean that we should let it be destroyed by insecurities and fear of being hurt. Especially when it came to siblings like Junhong and I. We were a little broken, a little jaded. The fact that I could deal with things by acting like they didn’t exist didn’t mean that my brother could. And maybe I wouldn’t be able to keep pretending that nothing happened for long either. Because something did happen, and it was big.

His shoulders drooped a little and for a fleeting moment I thought it meant that he was sad or disappointed. With panic I looked up to him, only to find that he was watching me with relief. We didn’t say anything. He opened his arms wide and I stepped into his embrace.

“I’m just glad that we’re not fighting anymore, noona. Trying to make a point by not talking to you for a week is really hard.”

I laughed but simultaneously felt my tears leave wet stains on the shoulder section of Zelo’s jacket. It was such an odd feeling, laughing while crying. It was the feeling of happiness while something small inside of you seemed to break. Something that you finally needed to say goodbye to.

My little brother wasn’t so little anymore and it was time that I would come to accept that. Somewhere along the line, our embraces had started to consist of Zelo wrapping his arms around me, rather than the other way around. I realised that I didn’t mind.

“Oh, come on. You’ve only danced with that creep and with Daehyun hyung. That hardly counts as having danced at all!”

Zelo was the more musically inclined one of the two of us. Seeing how he spent his days doing street dancing or b-boying, he was way more confident in his dancing than I was. I was okay with slow songs, they were easy. But what did I do with the more upbeat ones?

When I shrugged, Zelo just rolled his eyes at me – the brat – and then pulled me to the dancing floor, where most of the younger guests were having fun. The older guests were at the side, either watching the crowd or talking happily to each other. Any pulling or resisting from my side didn’t stop him from forcing me to dance when we were in the midst of bodies moving to the music.

He automatically started popping. His confident ways had me jealous, but the fun faces he made while dancing had me laughing. I suppose these kinds of conflicting emotions could only be ignited from being around people I loved. And Zelo I loved dearly.

After some coaxing and hooting, I joined him and Jongup, who’d found us after half of the song had passed. I had to admit, even though I didn’t know what I was doing it was a lot of fun. At some point I saw Youngjae giving me the thumbs up and when I bumped into Himchan, a lot of unnecessary twirling and lifts had ensued. Truthfully, I was having a blast.

“I’m so dizzy though,” I whined to Himchan. He ignored my complaining and raised my hand in the air and had me twirling another time. I saw the world spin by until I was abruptly stopped by the familiar sensation of a certain person’s arm wrapping around my waist.

“You heard what she said, hyung. Time to call it quits,” Daehyun’s voice rang just next to my left ear. I felt exceptionally dizzy and I was having a dawning premonition that it wasn’t just because of the excessive twirling, but that it had more to do with a certain Jung Daehyun. His arm was still safely wrapped around my middle and Himchan didn’t fail to notice.

He arched an eyebrow at Daehyun and then, a knowing grin dawned on his lips. For a moment, I thought that Himchan would finally let me go, before he seemed to think the better of it. He made an attempt to snatch me back, but Daehyun quickly tugged me along, away from Himchan.

“As for you,” Daehyun murmured into my ear, way closer than was actually necessary, “you should probably get something to drink. C’mon.”

I almost wanted to whine again when Daehyun’s arm left my waist, but my dissatisfaction quickly vanished when the contact was replaced by his fingers intertwining with mine as he pulled me along. He was talking to me, and I vaguely remember responding to him fairly normally, but all the while my heart was thumping in my chest. Breathing became a little harder and my head felt light. This time around, I was sure it wasn’t because of the dancing.

He smirked and handed me the soft drink he’d ordered for me. We sat down at the closest table. He was at one end and I was directly opposite of him.

He’d looked a bit tired at the beginning of the evening but with his smiles playing at the corners of his eyes, I couldn’t tell now. He’d loosened up his tie – it was hot inside, after all – and that made him look all the more attractive.

“Thank you,” I suddenly blurted.

He seemed confused by my sudden outburst and so he put down his drink and leaned forward. “Uh, for making sure that you’re hydrated?”

“No, no. I mean, thank you for telling Zelo that I was on the balcony.”

His mouth formed an ‘o’ shape for a moment before he looked me in the eye and asked: “How did you know I told him that?”

“I had a hunch,” I shrugged it off and took another sip from my straw. They’d decorated the drink with a slice of lemon at the edge of the glass and a small paper flower around the top part of the straw. I happily admired the way they’d done it. “You know, I actually wished you wouldn’t meddle with my life so much…”

I paused and saw him wince a bit. Grinning cheekily at him, I continued: “But I have to take back my words now. I’ve been extremely stubborn and proud about it, but in reality, you were completely right. And I just wanted to say that I’m really thankful that you’re so patient with me.”

He turned his head away so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. For a moment I was worried that I’d made him angry. God knew he had enough reason to be, after the unnecessary drama I kept putting him through whenever things concerned my family. Then he looked back at me with a wide smile and his eyes showing this mesmerising twinkle to them.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to show you something. Grab your drink and come with me.”

He held out his hand expectantly, waiting for me to place mine in his. I looked down at his outstretched arm, wondering what this all meant. The hand-holding before this, I’d waved off as a mere coincidence. But this – this conscious effort of holding his hand out for me – was not just coincidence, was it?

Almost shyly, I touched my palm to his palm and found the feeling of his touch to be gently warm. He seemed most amused with my reluctance, but thankfully he didn’t say anything and just guided us through the crowd towards the exit of the ballroom. We stepped into the elevator.

“I really just stumbled on it this afternoon after unpacking. Youngjae kept blabbing his head off about his Dad’s company and their recent developments on their new operating system or something. I needed some fresh air and quiet and well – here we are.”

It was a breathtaking view of the Incheon Bridge. It took moments for it to register that we were on the roof of the building already; the lights were just so captivating that I couldn’t bring myself to focus on anything else. Daehyun held the door open for me and I took small steps forward.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

“It is, isn’t it? Himchan’s father sure has taste. And an incredible load of money to invest in a building with a view as great as this one, but I guess we knew that already.”

He gave me a lopsided grin and then motioned for us to walk more toward the edge of the roof.

Apparently Himchan’s dad had also thought about how this view would be a sure way to attract many guests, so he had a few comfortable looking garden chaises placed, all in the direction of the Bridge. We both sat down on one each and kept silent that way for a few moments, taking in the view, the lights, the city and the people. The night could have lasted forever, with the soft hums of cars driving beneath us and the faint smell of the sea. Though I was cold, I realised this place was where I’d felt most comfortable all evening.

Right as this thought occurred to me, I suddenly became aware of Daehyun’s thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand that he was holding. His fingers, warm and rough, were embracing mine. It rarely happened that I became shy in front of him, but this time around I really found it hard to bring myself to look at him as he held my hand.

I was overtaken by a surge of joy going through my spine upon finally realizing what this meant. What it had meant when I saw him while dancing with Ilsung, why I’d felt so fluttery while dancing with Daehyun instead. And what he wanted me to know as he held my hand. That was what got me shy.

And yet, this was also the moment I could finally feel myself sobering up. This evening had been odd and a bit like a dream, but this moment – this was when I finally woke up.

I looked at his thumb long and hard, the circles it traced, and focused on the feeling of his warm touch to my skin. I wanted to marvel in the moment and enjoy the contact, however slight it might have been. With both of us not being much touchy-feely around each other usually, having this bit of skin contact was a nice change of pace. It felt as shameful breaking the contact as it was maintaining it.

I raised my gaze to look at Daehyun, only to find that he was already looking at me. Again, I felt an amazing rush of adrenaline. He was making this so hard, so much more difficult than it really should have been. Reluctantly, I dropped my view to look at our entwined hands and swallowed thickly as I pulled my hand away from his.

Freedom did that. Erasing borders. The limits that lay there in daily life, always maintained in our schedules, always there to remind us of what we could and couldn’t do, were suddenly erased from our memories. During breaks, it was too tempting to give in to what we couldn’t do. And that was what was happening between Daehyun and me. We were erasing borders that we both knew were supposed to be there.

I turned to look at the Bridge again, because I couldn’t bear the idea of looking at Daehyun again after that. I imagined that he might look disappointed. Maybe he would understand. But he would probably still be hurt, nonetheless.

We didn’t talk much after that. When I felt that the silence was too much to bear, I awkwardly cleared my throat and said: “We should get back. They’re probably wondering where we are.”

He probably heard my implication that I didn’t want our friends to misunderstand. The only thing that could make this situation any worse would be for them to think that we’d spent tonight making out in some far corner, when the only thing that had happened was that we’d held hands. And I’d rejected even that. I’d rejected the innocent act of just holding hands.

Except that it hadn’t felt innocent. It had felt like I was doing something wrong.

Before I could exit the roof, I heard Daehyun speak up from behind me: “I don’t care how long you’re going to keep hesitating, Choi Nana. Just know that when you make up your mind, I’ll be here.”

I walked on without waiting for him. He didn’t move until the doors of the elevators had come to a close and by then, I couldn’t tell his silhouette apart from the darkness.

By ‘here’, Daehyun didn’t mean the roof. He meant anywhere. Just anywhere I could go back to.

And that thought comforted me more than it should have.

Later the evening, I left the ball room with a completely drained yet slightly tipsy Heeyoung, my arm hooked with hers. As we stood in the elevator, she slurred: “Oh Nana, I had suuuuuch a good evening. Did you?”

She was an idiot. But a lovable idiot. I helped her stand straight again, as she was leaning to the walls of the elevator and was about to sink down to the brand new maroon carpet. Smiling slightly, I lied: “I sure did, Heeyoung.”

She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between lies and truth in this state.

I made her lie down in the bed she’d claimed, covered her with the clean white blankets after pulling off her shoes and then went over to my own bed, quickly changing into my pajamas. As I turned off the lights and lay down, I couldn’t help wondering if I should have let Daehyun hold my hand. What if I’d moved closer to him then? What if I hadn’t suggested going back to the party?

If I’d ignored the voice at the back of my mind nagging at me that I couldn’t have Daehyun – that I wasn’t allowed to – what would have happened?

Naturally, I didn’t get much sleep. I don’t remember falling asleep. When I did, I probably felt as restless as I’d felt when Daehyun’s arms were around me.

I know that I'm terrible, but I just really wanted to wish Farsis a happy birthday in the best way I could think of, so here it is. Happy bday!

L