[ys] track two: remember us this way
A/N: I must be in the mood for songfics lately, because this just popped out of nowhere. For Eunice - thank you for always being my cheerleader and encourager of feels <3
This is a continuation of Falling, that imagines the aftermath of that impromptu duet. This is another amazing song from A Star is Born, which you can listen to here.
+++
She thinks he should be backstage, running through the set for tonight, so it completely takes her by surprise when she feels the softest of breaths ghosting across the back of her neck, startling her violently from where she’s peering through the camera viewfinder. “Jesus.”
“Nope, just me,” Yong-hwa says, simply, but with the lopsided grin she’s come to know all too well. He looks over her shoulder at the empty stage, with the coils of wire looping haphazardly, at the guitars in their stands, ready to go for tonight’s show. “Huh. I guess Ji-yeon is going to kill us for not taping down the wires, but it does look pretty.”
She shows him the image on the screen; a black and white image, shot from when she got on her knees and pressed her cheek to the stage floor, the coils of wire blurring into the foreground, the guitars tall and proud, silhouetted against a lone stage light she’d wheedled Jeon-dol into turning on for her for this photo. When she looks up, her left shoulder is pressed into his chest, his arm already tucked around her waist like it belongs there. For one damnable moment, she just lets herself lean in. “It’ll go up before the show. A teaser shot.”
“You know best,” Yong-hwa hums against her temple, and it buzzes through Joo-hyun, a current of energy, motion that sets off other cells fluttering and coming alive and she thinks, move away now, but her body doesn’t seem to want to obey. Yong-hwa grips her other shoulder, propelling her around so that she faces him full on and the left side of her feels cold, bereft all of a sudden. “It’s time,” He says, and her eyes shoot up to meet his, a cold prickle of premonition against the back of her neck.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “Don’t think I haven’t heard you tinkering around with the boys, or staying up late writing in that notebook of yours.” His hand comes up, cupping her neck, warm and steady. His fingers skate lightly across the line of her jaw. “You have a song there, Seo Joo-hyun, and tonight’s the night everyone, including me, is going to hear it.”
Her heart plummets straight to her stomach.
Some of what she’s feeling must show on her face, because Yong-hwa’s other hand comes up; his thumb brushing the apple of her cheek. “Now don’t give me that look,” He chides. “Don’t tell me we’ve spent 9 months on the road together to have you give me that I’m-not-a-good-singer schtick again.”
There’s some relief mixed in with the thudding of her heart; so he thinks she’s nervous. But his words, 9 months, ring in her head; a veritable alarm bell that slices shrilly through her Jung Yong-hwa induced haze. It reminds her of a shaky decision made weeks ago; a sandcastle promise ready to dissolve at the slightest wave. The protest is out of her lips before she can even think, “The song… it’s not ready… I’m… I can’t…”
But she is silenced by the press of his lips against her brow; a feather-light sensation that has her eyelids fluttering shut. For a moment, she just lets herself cling to him, a hand curling tightly in the fabric of his shirt and she breathes him in deep; coffee mixed with the faintest woodsy scent of his cologne, and she tries not to think about the hot prick of tears in the corner of her eyes.
They stand like that for a long while, but when he pulls back to look at her, the smile on his face, soft and full of belief, is enough to make her eyes smart again. “That’s why it needs to be played,” He says lightly, kissing her once more at the crown of her head. “The best songs only get finished when they’re performed.”
She wants to say something, to let out even a fraction of the words in her head, but he is already walking away backwards and the moment is lost. “Last song tonight!” He calls jauntily. “Don’t forget.”
+++
The performance had gone viral right after the concert.
She, Seo Joo-hyun, viral. She who once faked the flu to get out of the show-and-tell session their teacher organized in elementary school. She who barely made it through the choir audition in high school, and only because Mrs Kim was kind and patient and played the introduction at least 10 times before a sound even came out of her throat.
She would watch the video later that week, at the girl with her arms outstretched, head thrown back, voice soaring so easily that it made her throat catch - and all she could think was, that’s me?
But it was all real; down to the moment at the end of the song when her eyes fluttered open and Jung Yong-hwa - rockstar Yong-hwa, frontman of CNBlue Yong-hwa, that Yong-hwa - looked at her with such unadulterated amazement visible even through a shaky fancam on Youtube.
And that had been the start of it all.
After the show, he’d asked her to hang around, to come have supper with the band. Jung-shin ate an impossible amount of lettuce wraps, while Min-hyuk poured Tae-yeon a drink politely, and she desperately tried to pretend not to notice that Jung Yong-hwa was staring at her from his seat opposite her.
They did talk though; with Yong-hwa asking if she ever wanted to be a singer, (“not professionally, never”), what she did now, (“just graduated and looking for a job”), what she wanted to do, (“probably something in the arts or non-profit”).
At the end of the night, when their manager was paying the bill, Yong-hwa leaned over to her and said, “We’re leaving tomorrow night, but if you wanted, you could come along with us.”
Come along with us. Like they were just going to the convenience store, or the post office, not a multi-stop tour of Korea.
She’d goggled at his offer, but Yong-hwa just stared back at her, completely uncomprehending of the gravity of what he’d just asked her, as if this were the most casual thing to ask someone you just met. And maybe it was, for someone like him, but Joo-hyun wasn’t like him. She was just a regular person, with regular ambitions and pressing things to worry about, like finding the right job, or finding something productive to do while trying to get that job. Following a band on tour - even if it was one of the hottest rock bands in Korea now- did not fall into that category by any means.
But instead of the no she was so sure of, she found herself blurting. “I’ll think about it.”
She worried about it all night, dragging Tae-yeon home with her for an emergency sleepover, because nothing in her past had prepared her for something like this.
“I think you should go, maknae.”
“It’s crazy,” Joo-hyun said, flopping down onto her bed. “Tell me you think it’s crazy, unnie.”
Tae-yeon had smiled then; warm and affectionate, completely devoid of any of the emotions of envy or jealousy that anyone else might have shown. “Maknae, you’ve always worked so hard and been so focused in school. And now, this sounds like an amazing opportunity to see new things, to meet new people. You’re being offered a behind-the-scenes view of a world we’ve never even dreamed of. Tell me that doesn’t excite you.”
At Joo-hyun’s silence, Tae-yeon had gone on. “We don’t always have to take the path we think we should. Sometimes our stories don’t go as planned. The point is that we write our own stories.” Her eyes locked on Joo-hyun’s. “How do you want yours to go?”
It took everything in Joo-hyun to pack the barest of necessities, to tell her parents and to go to the tour bus; the voice in her head plaintively chanting what are you doing, Seo Joo-hyun. But when Yong-hwa flung open the bus door, his eyes alight, his grin as welcoming as it had been onstage, it was as if her fears had been snuffed out, the voice in her head falling quiet.
Tae-yeon was right; it was a brand new world she was getting to look into. She saw the after behind the high of each concert; the bleary-eyed crew slurping down coffee as they tore down sets late into the night; the way the band members huddled for debrief after each night, discussing the good and bad of each show; the round glasses and tired frown Yong-hwa wore as he, Jung-shin and Min-hyuk re-arranged the next day’s songs.
Not everything she learned was pleasant. One of her earliest discoveries was that she was not the only girl on tour with the band. There was always a rotating cast of pretty faces in each city; she muddled around in the dark for a bit, catching whispers until she realized that these girls were groupies who hooked up with the band or crew members. It was the first night she wanted so badly to go home; she was embarrassed beyond belief by her glaring naiveté, and worse, filled with doubt and mortification if this was the real reason why Yong-hwa had asked her along.
But as the days went by, Yong-hwa never once did anything to suggest that he wanted more from her, or made any kind of move towards her or the groupies. He was just… Yong-hwa; interested in random things like which of their albums she liked best, which song she thought they should do for the encore set, what she felt like eating for lunch. He barely even seemed to realize that there were groupies hanging around, but then again, the groupies didn’t seem to do much, short of making conversation with the band members and sneaking drinks in one of the tour buses.
She was determined to be different, which is why she approached Sang-hoon after two weeks, asking how she could be of actual help to the band on tour.
She began by taking charge of the band’s social media, handed over with some relief by the label’s solo media executive, who also had her hands full with other artistes’ accounts. Joo-hyun started taking her own photos; of little stolen moments between the band or the calm before the show, and posting them. The fans seemed to like these, and she grew to enjoy interacting with some of the fans, dropping comments here and there under the band’s handle.
She also started making friends with some of the crew members; she brought daily coffee for the sound guys and girl, Min-hwan, Jae-jin and Amber, who could lay down the quickest, sickest raps she’d ever seen. The back-up singers were a little harder to get through to; but she eventually bonded with Soo-yeon and Soo-jung one night over chick flicks, and soon they were randomly goofing off, stacking harmonies on 60s songs just for fun. And of course, there were Jung-shin and Min-hyuk; initially idols to Joo-hyun, but proving to be earnest, sincere and humorous, alive in a way she had never imagined them to be, especially when they went to a sauna one night and played games until Joo-hyun cried with laughter. It was people like these, who made her feel like she had a home, no matter which city they moved to.
But Yong-hwa was an entirely different kettle of fish altogether.
He was her friend, a good friend, something that never ceased to amaze Joo-hyun. He had been someone she’d always admired from afar, crushed on even in high school, and now the person she used to stare at on a poster actually sat opposite her in the tour bus, plucking at his guitar.
But for all her lack of experience in the romance department, she also knew that he wasn’t just her friend. Maybe it was in the way he always jostled to sit next to her at lunch, the way he’d play snatches of new songs just for her as they sat cross-legged on an empty stage, the way he’d pull the curtain over his bunk aside to say good-night and Joo-hyun would lie there for a good fifteen minutes, confused by the warmth in her stomach, by the way his face lingered in her mind.
It wasn’t something either of them talked about, and Joo-hyun could never put a finger on when he started becoming more affectionate with her; an arm slung around her when they sat together in the common area of the bus, his fingers toying with her hair as she frowned over another social media post, the soft, quick kisses he pressed to her forehead before he bounded out onstage. And it wasn’t a secret that she felt the same way - it was literally impossible to spend all this time with someone like Jung Yong-hwa and not fall for him. He was everything she wasn’t; funny, bright, the life of the party that everyone turned to, but at the same time, steady and comforting, a life buoy in a sea of faces and sensory overload.
Still, there was always that little voice; a voice of doubt and worry that spouted like a leaky tap from time to time, filling her mind with doubts she couldn’t quite silence -You’re just his flavor of the month. What’re you going to do when he gets tired of you? It’ll never work out between someone as famous as him and someone like you. You know that if you start dating, the media’s going to have a field day digging up dirt on you? Nothing you do or say is going to be private anymore. What does he see in you anyway?
Most of the time, she was able to force that voice to the very recesses of her mind. What did it matter? The tour was going well. He was happy. She was happy. That’s all that mattered.
In the end, it was social media that threw open the floodgates; broke down the dam she’d been building over the past few months.
She’d clicked into her own social media account; it hadn’t been updated since she went on tour with the band and she’d posted a picture of the back of the tour bus - To new adventures! It was her most-liked picture, with comments pouring in from all her friends. It took her about 20 minutes to finish replying to all the comments, before she clicked over to her timeline.
The first picture she saw was of her friend, Ki-Yong, dapper in a suit, his hair neatly gelled back. He was holding up a staff pass, his smile bright and pleased. The caption read, Can’t believe I’m actually here. The future is looking bright. #samsung #dreamcometrue
He must have landed his dream job at Samsung then; Joo-hyun typed in a quick comment of congratulations, asking him which department he was with. She was still smiling as she scrolled past some pictures of a cute dog, her senior Teuk and his wife on their honeymoon, when she hit the second picture that was enough to give her pause.
Another friend from school, Ji-won, looking unusually demure in a business jacket and skirt combo. Her eyes were squeezed shut though in an approximation of happiness, and in her hand was a sheaf of paper. Joo-hyun pinched the picture to zoom in on the title. Confirmation of Training.
After months of interviewing, I made it! You’re looking at SBS’s newest announcer-in-training~
There were already at least 40 comments of congratulations and heart emojis below the photo, but Joo-hyun was suddenly overcome by a sick feeling in her stomach.
It was awful; she knew that she should be happy for her friends, and she was, but there lay the rub: all her classmates were making inroads in the working world, achieving the dreams that they’d always had - and here Joo-hyun was, tagging along with a band on their tour, not working, not even doing an internship or any kind of productive paid work.
It felt like the carpet had suddenly been yanked out from under her feet and all the wind had been knocked out of her.
She couldn’t hide from the truth of it anymore: she had to go home. She had to go back to real life - working life, like any proper responsible graduate would do, and take steps towards achieving her own dreams.
It was all good and well to go on an adventure, but surely, every adventure had to come to an end, right?
She wanted to tell Yong-hwa; it was the right thing to do surely, but that night, when she saw him coming towards her backstage, his smile wide and welcoming like nothing was wrong, the words stuck in her throat.
It hit her suddenly, that going home would also mean ending this. Ending whatever it was that was going on between her and Jung Yong-hwa, because there was no way a famous rockstar would dream of keeping in contact with her, not when she wasn’t physically with him.
And Joo-hyun realized with a pang, that she wasn’t ready for that. Wasn’t ready to lose Yong-hwa; his smile, his thoughts, his presence. But what other choice did she have?
The song began as a way for her to untangle her mess of emotions. It was nothing more than singular, unrelated thoughts that would come to her randomly, but it wasn’t until one night that she was snapping pictures of Yong-hwa from backstage; wasn’t until he looked at her from across the stage, his smile blinding in the stage lights, his posture confident and relaxed, that the words came to her instinctively: I’ll always remember you this way.
From there on, it just came together scarily easy; her previously disjointed thoughts beginning to tell a cohesive story when they were re-arranged around this lyric. It was almost as if the song was taking on a life of its own, and Joo-hyun’s only job was to put it down in words and music. She began to tinker on the keyboards during sound check, testing out chords and slotting them to the lyrics. It had been Jung-shin who had been onstage with her one of the mornings, who offered to play along with her, with Min-hyuk joining in the next day to lay down the beat. It was also Jung-shin who asked her about the lyrics, but she’d begged off, saying that they weren’t ready yet.
Yong-hwa hadn’t been able to join soundcheck on that first morning she played together with Jung-shin, but he must have overheard that second day with the boys. Which of course, led to his request today. Only, he didn’t know what the song was about. Didn’t know what the song would mean for her, or them.
“Hey.”
She jumps again; torn out of the sudden whirlwind of memories, but it’s only Amber. She’s holding out an in-ear monitor pack, but one eyebrow is quirked. “For you. They’re on their second last song already.”
There’s no turning back now.
She hopes that Amber can’t tell that her hands are shaking or deathly cold, as they close around the pack. “Thank you.”
She fumbles with the pack; clipping it to her jeans, as Amber continues. “The microphone is already up at the piano. So you can just sit down and,” Here she gestures smoothly. “Away you go!”
“Thank you.” Joo-hyun says automatically, and there must be something in her voice that gives her away because Amber peers at her warily through the twilight of backstage. “You okay?”
She nods, desperately wishing she was holding on to her own microphone, anything at all, while Amber eyes her, obviously unconvinced. It also occurs to her belatedly, that she isn’t just leaving behind Yong-hwa, but all her friends here - Amber, Soo-yeon, Soo-jung, Jung-shin, Min-hyuk - and the thought makes her lurch forward, throwing her arms around a surprised Amber.
“Thank you, Amber,” She says, and her throat is impossibly tight now, an impending sign of tears. “Thank you for everything.”
Behind her, Yong-hwa’s voice filters into her awareness. “I’d like to invite someone up here to close us. You all know her; you saw her singing with me in In-cheon and she was incredible…”
Joo-hyun pulls back, swiping furiously at her cheeks, at the stray tear that has escaped. You are not allowed to lose it now, Seo Joo-hyun.
Instead, she turns away from Amber’s frown, doesn’t let herself look back as she walks towards the main stage as the lights and noise hit her and she reminds herself, smile, smile, smile, wave, everything’s fine.
She manages to Yong-hwa’s eye, a fleeting glance, before she busies herself with sitting at the piano, adjusting the microphone stand. The actions center her; help her regain composure.
“Hi,” She says, looking out into the crowd; a black shapeless mass of faces and arms, and somewhere, somehow, she pulls out a smile for them. “I’m Seo Joo-hyun.”
“I wrote this song,” She says, quiet, “For someone who has been so special to me.” She pauses, trying to find the right words. “You know how you can live your life day by day, and you’re happy; everything’s good. But you don’t realize how it has never been enough until you meet this person, who sees you not for what you are but who you can be.”
Her eyes are stupidly moist again, but she blinks hard.
“I hope you like this song.” She says, her voice catching, and she hopes to God that no one heard. “May it remind you of that person in your life, of everything that is good and beautiful because of them.”
There is clapping, some supportive shouting, but Joo-hyun tunes it all out. Her fingers are trembling as she puts them on the keys, but before she presses down, she looks at Yong-hwa. He is smiling, soft and tender in a way that makes her heart physically hurt. This is for you, Yong-hwa, she tells him fiercely without saying anything out loud. This is your song.
The piano chords are full and sure, ringing out in the silence of the stadium.
The Arizona sky burning in your eyes
You look at me and babe, I wanna catch on fire
It’s buried in my soul like California gold
You found in the light in me that I couldn’t find
She closes her eyes, the last line transporting her back to nine months ago, when Jung Yong-hwa saw her, pulled her out of the crowd, head-first down a rabbit-hole of adventure, different cities and falling in love through it all.
So when I’m all choked up
But I can’t find the words
Everytime we say goodbye,
Baby, it hurts
When the sun goes down,
And the band won’t play
I’ll always remember us this way
The original lyric had been I’ll always remember you this way, but the more she’d worked on it, she realized it wasn’t just a simple goodbye song. It was a song immortalizing everything between them; telling their story, which always had music interwoven into its fabric. It was a song that she wanted him to hear, and think back of moments like this, with the both of them standing on the same stage, tied together by the very thing that had brought them together - music.
Jung-shin and Min-hyuk sync in on the entry to the next verse, just like they’ve rehearsed and she flashes them a quick, grateful smile. She chances a look at Yong-hwa, wondering about his reaction to the song.
He isn’t smiling. He isn’t frowning. He’s just… looking at her.
Lovers in the night,
Poets trying to write
We don’t know how to rhyme,
But damn, we try
But all I really know, she sings, switching to the higher octave even as she meets his gaze head-on. This part is important. He needs to know the truth of these words. You’re where I wanna go. The part of me that’s you will never die.
She plays a little stronger now, building up the song.
So when I’m all choked up
But I can’t find the words
Everytime we say goodbye,
Baby, it hurts
When the sun goes down,
And the band won’t play
I’ll always remember us this way
This part of the song is new; there are no lyrics for it yet, but Joo-hyun throws herself into those transition chords - F, C, Bb, G. Beside her, Jung-shin and Min-hyuk are swelling on their instruments, obviously paying greater attention to her and her body language and where she wants the song to go. She wordlessly vocalizes notes, letting a single line, new, unfiltered, raw escape - I don’t want to be just a memory, baby - and it’s true; she so badly wishes they could be more than this, than feelings unsaid, than two ships passing in the night. She wants to be real and tangible and with him, but she can’t. And that’s the truth of that.
So when I’m all choked up and I can’t find the words, she sings and her voice is soaring, the same way it did during that first performance. It doesn’t even sound like her anymore; she feels like she’s just listening to this raw, emotional voice belt out her song. Everytime we say goodbye, baby, it hurts.
When the sun goes down, she breathes, the song winding down, and now she looks again at him. This is it; her swan song, her heart laid bare for him, and she wants him to know that. And the band won’t play -
I’ll always remember us, this way.
It might be a trick of the light, but she thinks she sees it in his eyes; that awful understanding of what she’s going to do, what this song really means, and her vision swims suddenly; hot and blurry with tears.
Distantly, she hears the roar of the crowd, a rhythmic chanting of her name, but she just feels hollow inside, like her heart has been scooped out of her. There’s just too much to process; the way he’s standing, completely still and unmoving, just looking at her, the buzzing in her fingers, the confusion of noise in her heart and she stumbles to her feet, dipping into a deep bow so that she can have a moment to pull herself together. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, she thinks desperately.
Everything from there is in negatives; don’t look back, as she strides from the stage, don’t talk to anyone, as she pulls off her pack. Don’t stop, she breathes, tears = coursing down her cheeks as she stuffs the last of her belongings into her bag. You can’t stay, she chokes as she slings her bag over her shoulder.
She puts her tour notebook on his bunk, which is really just a mess of scribbling and thoughts that she had about him on this tour. It is a sorry excuse for a non-existent apology, but she hopes, somehow he will understand. That he’ll be able to read past the fragments and broken lyrics to see the one thing she could never tell him face to face. On top of it, she places the score to the song she just sang.
I’m writing my own story, she tells herself all the way to the bus station, wiping away the errant tears that streak down her cheeks.
What she doesn’t allow herself to dwell on is the new voice inside her, quiet but distinct. But I never expected it to hurt this much.