The Lie

Sumin had planned to spend the night snooping through the files on Taeyeon’s laptop in search of something that would reveal the idol’s true nature and how underserving she was of the title idol, if only to confirm that she, Sumin, had been right all these years; however, this plan quickly came to a halt the moment she sat down at Taeyeon’s desk and discovered that the laptop was password-protected. She attempted a few guesses on the password but to no avail and ended up angrily stomping around the room afterward. The more she thought about the laptop, the more the mystery built up in her head, and she was certain now that there was something on that laptop that Taeyeon didn’t want anyone to see, something big.

After giving up on the laptop, she spent a few hours rummaging through whatever else she could find in that small room and eventually found herself back at Taeyeon’s desk staring at her reflection in the round makeup mirror, which was encircled with bright lights that exposed each inch of her new face. She applied the lipstick that she had found in Taeyeon’s pocket, gliding the red across her surgically-altered lips and, for a moment, missing the plumpness her lips used to have. Still, she thought, she much rather have Taeyeon’s face than hers, if only because that face brought with it a new life, and anything was better than her old life. She smacked her lips together a few times—three, to be precise, as was her compulsion—and then kissed her reflection, leaving a red and somewhat foggy imprint of her lips upon the glass.

Although she wasn’t tired, it was nearly five o’clock in the morning by that point and so she walked over to the bed, dimmed the lamp, and got under the covers. As soon as she did, an unexpected sensation overcame her—something akin to being … but in more of a twisted than a romantic way. She bit her lip, wondering if what she was feeling was because she was lying in the very place Taeyeon usually slept, or perhaps because she was wearing Taeyeon’s underwear… and her red lipstick… or maybe because of the intimacy of it all: the bed, the underwear, the lipstick, and now the secret note from Baekhyun that she held in her hand, which she began to reread.

I thought it would be easier to write because when I’m with you, I get shy and can’t open up to you. But I need you to know I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re always on my mind. Always. I’m sorry I don’t show it well. I just wish we had private lives so we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. Then we could be free to be together without worrying about what people think. Maybe one day…

She would have never thought that these words were Baekhyun’s, but then again, she knew nothing of Taeyeon’s relationship with him… or, for that matter, her relationship with Sehun, whom she had forgotten about until this very moment. She wondered now just what exactly the EXO maknae was doing in that car with Taeyeon. Was it possible that Taeyeon was cheating on Baekhyun? Sumin didn’t find this that surprising, considering the type of person Sumin knew Taeyeon to be—the type of ungrateful snob who, even if she had everything, would still want more. Maybe, she thought, this note wasn’t even written by Baekhyun. After all, there was no signature. Maybe it was instead written by Sehun.

As she was thinking about this, she started to hear footsteps coming from down the hall, and before she could wonder whose footsteps those might be, the bedroom door slowly opened.

“Ah, good, you’re up!” Sunny said. She walked through the dimly-lit room, carefully balancing the cup of tea she was holding, and then sat down beside Sumin on the bed. “You feeling better?”

Sumin glared at Sunny and let out a deep breath of frustration as she folded the note in her hand and set it aside.

“I brought you this,” Sunny said, passing Sumin the tea. “This should help your voice, or at least soothe your throat a little.”

Sumin sat up in bed, pulling the sheet up to her neck to hide herself. She accepted the tea but didn’t drink it; instead, she set it down on the nightstand beside her and then folded her arms across her chest.

Sunny must’ve sensed the tension because she sighed at that moment and looked at Sumin with an expression full of worry. “You know that whatever’s wrong, you can tell me, right?” Sunny asked.

It suddenly dawned on Sumin that she was drawing unwanted attention. She needed to stop being herself and start being Taeyeon lest she have all the SNSD girls start worrying about her, which meant that she’d have to eventually speak, and do so with some semblance of confidence. If anything, she could keep up the pretense of being sick as blame for any inconsistencies with her voice, she thought. “I’m okay,” Sumin quietly said, using her best Taeyeon impression. She cleared . “Just not feeling well.”

Sunny grabbed the tea from the nightstand and offered it again to Sumin. “Drink this then,” Sunny said, smiling. “Please?”

Sumin acquiesced and began sipping from the cup.

“The way you looked last night back in the lobby, you really had me worried,” Sunny said. “You kinda looked scared or something, or maybe just sorta withdrawn, I don’t know.”

Sumin a dribble of tea from her lip and shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said.

“It got me thinking about that time that guy came on stage and grabbed you,” Sunny said. “It was almost the same look you had after that whole experience.”

Sumin knew what Sunny was talking about. A few years earlier, SNSD was performing in a music festival at Lotte World when a man suddenly walked onstage and grabbed Taeyeon, pulling her out of the performance. He didn’t get very far, just barely making it backstage before he was tackled. It was in the headlines for a while and was labeled as a failed kidnapping attempt. Sumin had followed that story closely and must have watched the video of the incident at least a hundred times, happy that if nothing else, the man’s failed attempt had at least shaken up Taeyeon’s perfect little world. How strange it was that Sunny brought that up, Sumin thought, considering that Sunny was unknowingly talking to someone right now who had actually succeeded in kidnapping Taeyeon.

“You remember how I went after you?” Sunny asked.

Sumin thought back on the video footage, remembering then that Sunny was the only SNSD member to follow after the man; the other girls, contrarily, had all continued with the performance. “Of course,” Sumin said. “I remember.”

Sunny reached over to hold Sumin’s hand. “I don’t know why you were acting all weird earlier, but just know that no matter what, I’m here for you, okay?”

Sumin nodded and forced a smile, but she was too worried about Sunny’s hand on hers to pay any more attention to what she was saying. Sumin’s hands, like the rest of her body, hadn’t been surgically altered at all, and she was worried now that Sunny might feel something unfamiliar in the touch.

“Anyway, enough of that depressing business!” Sunny said. She patted Taeyeon’s hand and then stood from the bed. “You better get dressed! It’s getting late.”

Sumin glanced at the clock on the night stand and then back at Sunny, confused. It was just past five o’clock and she had only just now planned to sleep. She began to silently panic, wondering how she was going to stay alert enough to successfully pull off this impersonation all day.

Sunny and Tiffany drove their cars to SM while Sumin followed behind in the Porsche, grumbling to herself about how early it was. She didn’t understand why they were expected to be at work at six o’clock in the morning when there were no performances coming up. She had checked the SNSD calendar online routinely and knew that during July, while she was recovering from the surgery, the girls were out finishing their tour in Japan, and that in August there were only two performances listed—the KCON event in Los Angeles and the SMTown concert at the Seoul World Cup Stadium—both of which took place before she had claimed Taeyeon’s life.

Sumin tried to get all of her complaints out of her system by the time they reached SM, knowing that once she stepped out of the car, she had to be the idol they all expected her to be. Keeping this in mind, when she saw Sunny and Tiffany walking through the parking lot, she hurried to join them and then, in a desperate attempt to act like Taeyeon, she reached over to give Tiffany’s a quick pinch.

“Yah!” Tiffany exclaimed, hanging open in a smile as she glanced over at Sumin. “You already thinking about my this early in the morning?” She laughed and then playfully nudged Sumin. “Just wait until we get home later! I’m going to attack you with kisses!”

Sumin’s eyes widened at the mention of kissing. She knew that Taeyeon was somewhat y with the girls, which Sumin found utterly ridiculous, but she’d had no idea that the girls were apparently just as y back… to the point of kissing each other? Was this something only Taeyeon and Tiffany did? Sumin was confused by this, especially considering that both Taeyeon and Tiffany had boyfriends.

As it turned out, Taeyeon’s boyfriend was in the lobby at that very moment, waiting for the elevator with Chanyeol. When Sumin entered with Sunny and Tiffany, she stopped at the sight of him, not knowing what she should say or how she should act. To make matters worse, she was a bit star struck. She hadn’t felt this way around the girls, perhaps because she equated them with Taeyeon, which diminished any star power they might have otherwise had, or perhaps because she had mentally prepared herself these past couple of months to be one of them. Contrarily, she had only given a passing thought to the other SM idols she may meet and hadn’t quite prepared herself to step into the role of Baekhyun’s girlfriend.

Baekhyun and Chanyeol must not have heard the girls enter because they both continued waiting at that elevator, their backs to the lobby. Sumin decided that she should take the initiative and greet Baekhyun. After all, she thought, if she was Taeyeon, then surely she should at the very least say hello to her boyfriend. She wasn’t quite sure how to greet him, though, considering how little she knew of their relationship. Would Taeyeon throw herself on Baekhyun’s back, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his cheek? Or would she be a bit more shy and playful, perhaps by popping up behind him and covering his eyes with her hands until he guessed who she was? Or maybe they had more of a love-hate relationship, in which case Taeyeon might greet him by perhaps smacking the back of his head and then flashing a bright smile when he turned around.

With little time to decide, Sumin rejected all of those scenarios and opted to simply tap him on the shoulder, which, in a way, allowed her to see how Baekhyun would then greet her, rather than the reverse. Some part of her expected him to turn around and immediately kiss her, and in the two seconds between tapping his shoulder and when he did, in fact, turn around, she tried to prepare herself for this. The least she had expected was a hug, or maybe a smile, but ultimately, Baekhyun did none of these things. Instead, he merely bowed his head just a bit and then, because the elevator doors opened at that moment, he just as quickly turned back around and stepped into the elevator.

Sunny and Tiffany followed, and Sumin was sort of nudged into the elevator along with them. As they rode the elevator, Sumin kept her eyes on Baekhyun, confused as to why he had greeted her in such a sterile manner, as if there were no feelings between them at all. Baekhyun didn’t seem to notice her eyes on him; he was busy chatting with Chanyeol, the two quietly giggling. Sumin then noticed that the boys were holding hands, and when the elevator stopped at that moment, just as the doors opened, she saw Baekhyun quickly kiss Chanyeol on the lips before they both stepped out.

“Aish, weren’t they told to ease up on the kissing?” Tiffany asked, shaking her head. She looked over at Sumin then, who stood frozen in the corner of the elevator, shocked by what she had seen. “If they get caught, that’s not just a scandal for them, but for you too,” Tiffany added.

“Ah, those boys are in love though,” Sunny said, shrugging. “But yeah, they should be more respectful of the situation.” She then looked over at Sumin with an expression full of what seemed like admiration. “You’ve sacrificed a lot to cover for them,” she said.

As Sumin slowly came to understand the situation, realizing that she was not Baekhyun’s real girlfriend but was instead being used as cover to draw attention away from Baekhyun’s relationship with Chanyeol, she felt her hands ball up in tense fists, her fingernails digging deep into her palms. There was so much that she was angry about that it was hard for her to focus her thoughts. She went from wondering how this ridiculous arrangement had come about, thinking that perhaps one of the managers or maybe the CEO himself had ordered Taeyeon to accept this fake girlfriend role, to thinking that perhaps Taeyeon had volunteered for the role herself, whether urged to do so or not, which made Sumin hate Taeyeon even more. She felt lied to. All this time, what she had envisioned as Taeyeon’s life was not actually reality. She was reminded then of what Seunghyun had said that night they’d had that fateful conversation. He’d said to her that the idols were not living real lives and that they were all instead just exhibiting ideals. It was all an illusion. Sumin hadn’t wanted to believe him. She needed to believe that Taeyeon’s life was perfect because then she could see could see Taeyeon as her cosmic opposite and could in turn make sense of her own suffering. But if this was not the case, if Taeyeon wasn’t living the perfect life, then that meant that she and Taeyeon were not tied to these opposite ends of the spectrum, and likewise not tied to each other.

At that moment, everything seemed meaningless to Sumin, and it took all of her strength to continue standing in that elevator when all she wanted to do was fall to the floor, feeling both physically and mentally exhausted.