1  Nana

“When Nana came home,” Kangjoon elbowed Youngji and bent low to her side, as if to let her in on a secret.  “He screamed is head off.”

Youngji glanced at Jackson.  Really?  her face seemed to ask.

Kangjoon smiled his big, amused smile. “Yep.”

Youngji scoffed, and felt that was the only appropriate response.

“You know, it was really entertaining.  I’ll bet you’re gonna be a great variety performer.” Seo Kangjoon’s voice was bright and encouraging, but held a quiet piece of jealousy that Young could see in his eyes as he spoke.

“Really?”  Jackson asked with a tone of surprise.  “They didn’t take me for the first season because they thought I wouldn’t be funny.  I’ve been really nervous.”

Seo Kangjoon shrugged.  “They probably didn’t cast you because they wanted the stars that YG and SM offered them.”

Youngji was about to defend Jackson, and say that JYP is just as big and powerful as the other two, but then she realized that defending JYP would just imply that Jackson really got cut for lack of talent.  Instead she asked, “But does that mean you were just acting?  You aren’t really afraid of Nana, Jackson?”

“No, that just my uh.. aegyo, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know.  I was worried it would be awkward with her… Things are always more comfortable if you start out by acting weird.”

Youngji nodded.  “Why would things be awkward?”

“Well, because she’s my noona…” He trailed off.

“And Jackson thinks she’s pretty, obviously,” Seo Kangjoon teased.  “Admit it, you do have a little crush on her.”

Jackson blushed a little and smiled wide but didn’t answer, but Youngji had an idea that his bashfulness was as much about someone believing the part he’d made for himself as it was for it really being true.  She wanted to keep asking questions, to try to get at what Jackson really felt, but she decided becoming the curious cat on the first day was probably not a good idea.

———————————

2  Guk Joo

Jackson is so nice to Guk Joo noona, Youngji thought to herself on the first night, and almost everyday afterward.  He’s really really nice.  Not in the way that a lot of other people are nice to her, which is a sort of condescending way.  It’s hard to be nice to someone who seems to enjoy when all the jokes are made at her expense, but Jackson is so genuinely, forcefully friendly towards her that he breaks the bubble that she’s surrounded herself with.  

Youngji figured that was why Jackson could become friends with sunbaes so easily.

Sometimes Youngji wished that she wasn’t treated like a cupcake by everyone - sweetly and like a little sister - if only so Jackson would pour his friendliness out on her.  She sometimes wondered what it would feel like to have Jackson protect her.

It was a weird thing to think about someone she barely knew.

Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to have Jackson hold her hand.

————————-

3  Sunny

Youngji began to feel that Sunny and Jackson were having a lot of skinship that no one else noticed.  Sunny treats Jackson like a little brother, because he's always sweet and cute, Youngji reminded herself.  It is just like Guk Joo unnie, Youngji told herself.

“Why were you afraid of Nana but not Sunny, Jackson?”  Youngji asked Jackson one day, when they were being driven from a music show back to the house.  “I was a little afraid of Sunny at first.  She’s so famous!  and she is so much more serious in person than I thought she would be.”

Jackson cocked his head.  “Afraid of Nana? Ohhh, you mean when I yelled…?”

Youngji looked at him a little strangely, but then nodded.

Jackson shrugged.  “I had seen Nana on the show, but I didn’t know a lot about Sunny.  But I respect her a lot.  She works really hard, and does really well.  People really like her.”

Youngji reaised her eyebrows.  “You don’t respect Nana a lot?”

“What? No!  I just… You know what I mean - I mean, it’s Girl’s Generation…”  He trailed off.  “It’s just a different vibe.  I feel like Sunny could teach me a lot of secrets — a-about the industry, y’know.”

Youngji’s face was unreadable.  She picked at her manicure, a false nail with a jewel embellishment about to peel off.  She swallowed.

“So… you had a crush on Nana, but you see Sunny as a professional?”

“Crush! Gosh, you’re just as bad as Kangjoon.”  He smiled at her.  “It’s true that Nana is pretty.  But it’s more than that she is, like, a model and just… seems more upscale than me, you know?  Like, I thought, ‘Nana is going to make me look really like an idiot.  Extra foreign.’”

“Jackson!”  Youngji said forecefully.  “How could you think such a thing?”

He smiled again  “Well, I didn’t know then how much everyone would like me.”

He laughed, and Youngji frowned.

————————-

4 Gayeon

Youngji sat on her bed with her back against the wall and slowly knocked her head softly behind her, thinking, hearing Jackson yell and skid along the floor downstairs.

She felt nervous.  The anxiety knotted in her stomach.

Gayeon is Jackson’s ideal type.  How nice that Jackson finally gets to meet her! Youngji lied to herself.

She held her palm upward, and gazed at her skin, pale as a bowl of sticky rice.  Jackson likes tan girls, ones who aren’t too thin and ones who are good at sports.  Not girls who are small and pale and bland like a grain of white rice.

She gazed at the ceiling, and Jackson kept on yelling.  If you like her, Youngji thought, just get it together and greet her.  She ground her teeth together. The thought occured to her that this was part of the role he picked to play.  It was his aegyo, so whenever a young and pretty girl came by he became Jackson Weirdo Banshee Boy.  It might be true that he was attracted to Gayeon, but he didn’t know her.

She wondered if, once he finally stopped hamming it up, he would pour his friendless out for her.

Later, he came upstairs to give her one of the bao which was starting to dry out.

“Met your dream girl, huh?”

Jackson gave a litle head nod but didn’t say anything else about it, and appeared to be almost uninterested in the previous events of the day. 

“What, didn’t you like her?” Youngji asked. “Or did she leave because you yelled too much.”

“It was nice to meet her… but… I probably won’t meet her again, and… I don’t know.  She’s just a person, like everyone else.  It’s not like we’re gonna date.”

“Yeahhhhh, but you want to, don’t you?”  Youngji asked in a teasing tone.

Jackson leaned against the wall and looked at her intently, but then he just shrugged again.

Instead of trying to force a real answer out of him, Youngji closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his calmness.  As intoxicating as the parts of himself that Jackson would turn on and off for others’ entertainment were, Youngji would always take the comfortable frustration his quiet self provided her and, if it was what he wanted, she would willingly leave just about everything else.

———————————

5  Youngji

“If you don’t stop arguing, we’ll make you get married!”

Those words were being thrown at Youngji and Jackson with increasing frequency.

“If you don’t stop, we’ll make you get married!”  and suddenly the two young entertainers would stifle their bickering and laughs, and face front, an affectation of stoicism overcoming their countenances.  

Youngji thought there couldn’t be much worse than having a secret crush so secret that people thought that implying you might like the person was so ridiculous it was a punishment.

But really, who would think she liked Jackson?  Who would like an idiot mud monster would thought it would be fun to spend hours stuck in a mud bank with her?  Who would like some guy who flirts with grandmothers in a market?

As she felt joy bubble in stomach, surrounded by strangers waiting to watch Got7 on tv, she wanted to shout that she LIKES THIS IDIOT.  But she couldn’t do that - not in front of strangers, certainly not on tv, and never in a million years in front of him.  So instead she yelled at the people around them, THERE HE IS. ON THE END, ON THE END.

When he turned, mock (or perhaps, truly) offended, to ask if she was teasing him, she had to refrain from kissing his dumb face.

For every nice thing he did for her, he would smother it with a burst of boyish teasing.  Every touch was countered with a shove, every smile paired with a childish tongue stuck out in her direction.  And not once did she find this was bothering her.  She would spend hours thinking of ways to pitch Jackji outings to the PDs and her managers, and would never hesitate when they pitched them to her.

“They’re just friends,” the PDs told the media.  Just Friends.  But no matter how close she and Jackson became, no matter how often they were together, Jackson held back from giving all his friendliness to her, like he had to Gukjoo or Sunny, and nothing she gave to him was pure friendliness.

After they had dragged the big metal pot back to the roommate car they were told to rest in the back seat (Jackson and Youngji both aware that sleeping cutely, or least pretending to, would be greatly appreciated).  Unsurprisingly, Jackson quickly fulfilled their hopes, and he drifted off to sleep.

Youngji pretended to sleep, too, but soon found herself, eyes half open, looking at Jackson’s hands through her lashes.

Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to have Jackson hold her hand.

With her pointer finger she softly touched his knuckle, then held her breath waiting for him to stir.  When he didn’t, she began to trace a chinese character she learned the day before on the top of his hand.  She traced it once, and Jackson slept soundly.

The day or two before Youngji had asked if he found it difficult to communicate in Korean.  Jackson said that it was a little bit difficult, but more that it was just different, and that he had to compartmentalize it.  In Hong Kong, English was for friends and Chinese was home.  Korean was just a new piece: work.

Youngji had chewed on that information for a while.  Being with her, talking to her was work.  She’d only been in this business for such a short time.  None of it seemed like work.  But just a few months ago she had spent every moment in her normal life, with her normal family, being excessively normal.  This world was a break from that.  It was a dream.

But how could a nice boy, who hadn’t seen his mother in 4 years, feel that way about that world?

Youngji tried to think of all the Chinese she knew.  She knew the characters for her own name, and a few others.  She knew the words thank you, and ok and noodles and…  love.  She looked up how to write the character for love.  AI.  and practiced the .

She traced the on Jackson’s hand again.  She checked that the cameras couldn’t see their hands, and traced it again.

LOVE, she traced.

LOVE

LOVE

LOVE.

His hand twitched, and she jumped, pulling her hand away and turning her attention to the street outside, willing Dongwook and Seho to finish filming in the record store and return soon.

When the others returned, and that began to drive back to the house, Youngji could feel Jackson’s eyes on her, but nervous that he had felt her touching his hand, she said nothing.  But she knew that avoiding his gaze was even more obvious.  This was proven when she felt Jackson’s hand wrap around hers, and his fingers slide next to hers, warm and soft.

Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to have Jackson hold her hand.

———————————

6 Hara

Hara was his favorite, she remembered.

The warmth of his hand around hers still lingered on her palm, but already she felt a cold wave of regret wash over her.  Why had she agreed that today would be the day for Hara's visit?

Youngji watched as everyone on the table jostled around to sit him next to Hara.  And she watched as all his charm came flowing out for her.  His makeup had mostly worn off throughout the day, and there he was with his real face — the one she saw before he went to bed, or in the car between music shows and roommate filming — charming Hara.

Hara is the prettiest girl Youngji knows.  And every nice thing that Hara said to Youngji made Youngji well up with tears because she knew she couldn’t hate her sunbae.  She couldn’t even be angry.  Just filled up with jealousy.

Youngji tried remind herself that Jackson is the way with everyone, everyone but Youngji herself.  

“Do you like Hara or Gayeon more?”  Youngji’s stomach dropped.

OF course, Gayeon.

of course.

When she caught Jackson’s eye she tried to portray the confusion she felt.  Just what was real and what was facade? She worried all she portrayed was pitifulness.

Jackson didn’t seem to notice any of that, but he soon shuffled back to his old seat — giving Youngji a little relief all the same.

———————————

7 Sophia

When Youngji introduced herself to Jackson’s mom as his best friend, he said nothing, merely looking distracted and annoyed.  Youngji knew that she wasn’t really his best friend, but rather his colleague, but…  She still thought about her hand in his, trying to ignore the fact that he had seemed to forget about it immediately.

When Seho teased that she was his girlfriend, Jackson looked even angrier.

Youngji thought about all the times she had seen him tear up as he thought about his mother and realized that the anger was probably more about having to spend his time performing here, rather than truly being with her.  

So Youngji was surprised when, while passing the room the mother and son were sitting in after filming wrapped up, Jackson called her in, and invited her to intrude on his mother-son time.

“I want you to introduce yourself to her.”

“But… I introduced myself to her downstairs.”

Jackson grimaced. “No, that was just everyone performing for the cameras.  I want to her to actually meet you.  So what do you say, best friend?”

Youngji sighed, but followed him into the room.

Doing a ful 90 degree bow, she greeted Jackson’s mother.  “Hello, I’m Heo Youngji.  It’s nice to meet you.”

His mom nodded.  “You’re very pretty!”

Youngji glanced at Jackson, hoping to see him blushing out of embarrassment.  But he only smiled shyly and nodded at his mother, clearly pleased at how nice she was being.  But when Sophia turned back to him and quietly asked him a question in Chinese, Jackson’s face turned the bright red Youngji was waiting for.  “Mom!”  Jackson whined.

“What did she say?” Youngji asked.  “Did I do something wrong?”

Sophia tried to clarify in slow English.  “You… are the girl…. that Jackson… likes.  He told me - before - that he likes you.”