[ys] track three: you weren't mine to lose
A/N: It's been a minute and half (or maybe four years to be precise). All the while, this was at the back of my mind. Here's to finally finishing this story. I hope you guys have been well.
In case your memory's rusty like mine - here's track one and track two. track four coming your way real real soon. <3
----
“Miss Seo Joo-hyun.”
“That’s me,” She says lightly, turning up the wattage of the pleasant smile on her face. The lady on the panel of three interviewers is the only one to return her smile.
The first man, tall with deep frown lines etched across his forehead, continues to flip through her resume and transcripts. “Good GPA, student body vice-president, president of the photography club and first cello in the university orchestra.” He looks up then, and Joo-hyun is briefly thrown by the faint flicker of a smile around his lips. “Impressive.”
She smiles back tentatively, but he sits back in his seat then, eyes fixed intently on her. “So. Tell us why you want to join KPR.”
Joo-hyun feels herself relaxing a little at this, even as the word spill out of her automatically. This is a question she’d anticipated and practised, so it affords her a few moments for her mind to wander. But as it always does these days, it keeps skipping back to that single nagging thought, like a record marred by a jagged groove: Please. I have to get this.
It’s been three months since she walked out on Jung Yong-hwa, without a word. Three months since she re-took her place in the real world, applying frantically for jobs that she had researched to death in university, trying to catch up to the rest of her friends in an impossible race. Trying to pretend as if the past nine months hadn’t happened.
She blinks, realizing belatedly that she has finished her answer and that everyone is looking expectantly at her. Someone must have asked a question and she must have blanked. The anxiety levels in her climb a few notches and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry,” She says breathlessly. “I’m just a little nervous.” Nervous of what happens if I don’t make it. Nervous because this is one of my last few options.
The other man on the panel leans forward, steepling his fingers. “I asked - so what have you been doing since you graduated?” He reaches over, pulling the papers over towards him. He refers to it, and when his eyes shoot up to lock on hers, the tingle of nerves becomes a full-out thrum. “It says here you graduated in June. It’s been almost a year now… what did you do in this time?’
She is also prepared for this question, but somehow, the answer always never comes out quite right.
“I did publicity work for a well-known public figure,” She says, hoping that her words channel a matter-of-fact breezy confidence. “I did social media strategy, content production and online community management for them and -“
“Which well-known figure? An organisation? Or a celebrity?”
She swallows. “A celebrity. But I was given day to day oversight over their postings, and gave them advice on expanding their fanbase -“
“Which celebrity?” The first man cuts in again, and this time, there is no flicker of a smile, of kindness. Instead, Joo-hyun feels the faintest touch of premonition; the weightlessness of a first missed step.
There is nothing further left for it then; the die is cast. Joo-hyun knits her fingers together in her lap to stop them from shaking. “CNBLUE.”
If she was hoping for any looks of recognition, she is sorely, poorly mistaken. The three interviewers exchange glances; the second man pulling out his phone, already tapping into it, and Joo-hyun’s stomach sinks to her knees.
The lady - perhaps the only interviewer still kindly disposed to Joo-hyun at this point - tries to salvage the situation. “CN…” She trails off, and her eyes are politely confused. “I’m not familiar with them.”
The first man sits back in his chair, his lip curled and Joo-hyun swallows at the dryness in her throat, giving a last ditch attempt. “They’re one of the most popular bands in South Korea now,” She says softly. “They’re on their national tour - they’ve sold out of almost all their venues…”
“You graduated from S University… and followed a band.” The second interviewer says. His voice is plainly confused, but it cuts deeper than if he had said it condescendingly or harshly. “Why?”
Joo-hyun closes her eyes helplessly. That’s what I want to know too, she thinks.
+++
A shot glass appears in front of her, clear liquid sloshing dangerously close to the rim and she looks up into Tae-yeon’s kind, distressed face. Her unnie jerks her chin at the glass. “Drink.”
She doesn’t drink often; alcohol has never suited her, but against her better judgment, she takes a generous sip, eyes watering slightly at the soju burning a path down her throat. Across the table, Tae-yeon’s lips purse in an approximation of unmistakable worry.
To distract herself and her best friend, Joo-hyun picks up her chopsticks, digging into the egg roll that has long gone cold. “I thought this was part of your plan, unnie.” She teases, acutely aware of how flat the joke falls. “Didn’t you call this your three-pronged approach to getting over someone?”
Big mistake - because now she’s thinking about the very person she doesn’t want to think about, the person who might have just cost her yet another interview and Joo-hyun picks up her half-full soju glass, draining it, for the lack of something to do. I think I’m beginning to see the appeal of this drinking thing. Already everything is growing fuzzy around the edges, the perpetual knot of worry taking up residence in her head loosening for what feels like the first time in weeks.
If the cheer in Tae-yeon’s voice sounds a mite forced, neither of them acknowledge it. “Of course. It’s a proven method too,” Here, she ticks them off on her fingers. “Alcohol - lots of it. Many blind dates with lots of eligible, wonderful men in Seoul. And purging all traces of him from your life.”
The last step already sounds more daunting than Joo-hyun wants to think about, and she settles for spooning up the cooling kimchi jjigae in front of them.
“Don’t worry about it, okay, maknae?” Tae-yeon’s voice is softer now. “It’s just one interview. It’ll be better the next time. And you know now that PR firms aren’t always looking for traditional types of job experiences… someone’s going to appreciate the work you put in these past few months. And that’ll be the right place for you.” Tae-yeon reaches over, re-fills Joo-hyun’s cup and holds up her own. “Here. To your success.”
Lately, it seems to takes very little to set Joo-hyun off - but this is one of those things; the absolute sincerity in Tae-yeon’s voice, the unwavering belief she can practically feel radiating off her best friend that makes her eyes involuntarily water. But it’s also so much more. It’s the way Tae-yeon came to the bus station to get her three months ago, the way she folded a sobbing Joo-hyun in her arms even without knowing what had happened. It’s how Tae-yeon never looks at her like the rest of the world does - like a story that’s already ended - and this is the only thing left that Joo-hyun would fight to keep.
She wipes her damp eyes fiercely, picks up her cup and it makes a satisfying clink against Tae-yeon’s.
+++
She finds a temporary job at the convenience store down the block. The shift hours give her the flexibility she needs to attend job interviews, the location is unparalleled (it’s literally a five minute walk from her home), and the pay - well. Beggars can’t exactly be choosers, can they?
During lulls in her shifts, she works on her resume, composes cover letters to potential employers, tries to find some freelance or contract work to tide her over. As hard as she might be on herself, she also knows that this is a bad time for job-hunters. The newspapers report dismal findings: a downsizing economy, bouts of shock retrenchments from large enterprises, graduates struggling to find steady jobs. These, especially the last piece of news, should bring her some modicum of comfort - that she isn’t alone in this sea of dismal prospects.
But it doesn’t. All she feels is this terrifying loneliness, the swell of pressure so intense and palpable, that she finds herself jerking to wakefulness in the middle of the night, hands tightly fisted in anxiety.
It feels as though Joo-hyun is fighting a losing battle with her mind these days - torn between two fronts: that of her lack of career prospects, and the very person who set her on this path.
She thinks of him more often than she should; in the first moments of semi-wakefulness each morning, before her conscious mind can muster their defences. At random moments in the day, when she sees something to trigger her memories - the guitar shop down the road, the cheeky joke of a schoolboy, chattering into his phone as he slurps down instant noodles at the counter. Late at night, when she tries so hard not to, but just can’t. It’s not just memories either, but questions. What is he doing? What must he think? Does he understand why? Does he hate me?
There are precisely two read, unanswered texts from him right after.
Where are you?
Why?
Sometimes, she finds herself picking up the phone, opening that chat, typing in a different message each time - I’m sorry, oppa. I hope you understand. Please don’t be angry at me. I had no choice.
She never sends these though. It’s a closed chapter - a closed book, she corrects herself fiercely. You don’t go opening wounds that are already closed, Seo Joo-hyun. He’s probably forgotten all about you already.
If there is one thing that gives her the tiniest comfort now, it’s in the CNBLUE social media pages. Without her at the helm, the updates have shrunk back to an occasional photo every month or so, paired with a caption so matter-of-fact and impersonal that it makes even Joo-hyun wince. On bad nights, she lets herself trawl the comment sections, filtering past the usual declarations of love and requests for shoutouts, to comments from the more ardent fans: What happened to all our updates? This doesn’t sound like you, oppa deul. Bring back your old social media manager.
Joo-hyun can’t bring herself to feel ashamed that a whopping 103 people have liked that comment.
She is doing okay though. She’s getting up, going to work, keeping busy. She isn’t sobbing into her pillow every night, obsessively checking their socials. It will take time, she tells herself, a mantra she clutches in her hand like a lifeline - but I’ll be okay. All this will fade and it’ll feel more just like it should. Just a memory.
That is what she thinks, at least until the Wednesday afternoon a pair of high-schoolers come into the convenience store.
“Let me see, let me see!” The shorter girl squeals, leaning over the arm of her friend, even as they dump their purchases unceremoniously on the counter. Joo-hyun rings them up, jumping slightly at the loud involuntary gasp of the younger girl, peering at her friend’s phone. “No way!”
The taller girl shrugs, her thumb jerking furiously; they must be scrolling through some article. “You know as well as I do - Dispatch doesn’t bother themselves with fake news.”
“But Yoon Min-ki,” The shorter one says, her eyebrows fusing together in a frown. “How could he be dating her?”
Yoon Min-ki, Joo-hyun thinks, putting their purchases into a bag, and her mind draws up the tall model-turned-singer, who is the It Girl of the season. What was her single? It’s some phrase - I Want to Be Yours? Make Me Yours? Her phone, tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, vibrates, but Joo-hyun ignores it.
“8,900 won.” She says to the girls, who begin to fish around for their wallets, still engrossed in their conversation.
“But she and Jung Yong-hwa?” The shorter one says in tones of deep disbelief. “Talk about a pairing no one saw.”
Joo-hyun’s fingers, closed around the handles of the bag, lose all feeling.
She doesn’t even realize that the two girls have turned to look at her, that the plastic bottles of banana milk have spilled out of the bag, rolling haphazardly across the countertop, until one of the girls catches it clumsily. And then, the words, stark in her mind - Jung Yong-hwa is dating Yoon Min-ki.
“Are you okay, unnie?” The taller one says, but her raised eyebrows are at odds with any genuine concern that her words are supposed to convey. But Joo-hyun can’t think about any of that right now.
“I’m fine,” She says, as her phone buzzes a few more times in her back pocket. Her hands shake, as she reaches out for the notes the younger girl proffers, trying to ignore the judgment in her eyes.
And when the automatic bell chirps behind them, signaling their exit, Joo-hyun pulls out her phone. Four messages from Tae-yeon, the first one reading: Do not look at it, maknae.
There can only be one thing Tae-yeon is referring to - but it’s too late for any of that now. She clears the message notifications, opens up Naver.
She doesn’t even have to key anything into the search bar - it is the first trending item. Jung Yong-hwa & Yoon Min-ki.
This is a Pandora’s box - some last self-preserving voice in her head pipes up. You open this link, you go down this road… you won’t like what you find, Seo Joo-hyun.
She swallows hard, her finger hovering over the link. Over their names together.
Maybe its an involuntary twitch, maybe it’s her body betraying her - but her finger jabs at the link and the page begins to load, before Joo-hyun can even recover enough to exit out of it and then she sees it. Pictures of Jung Yong-hwa and Yoon Min-ki.
The first pictures are innocent enough - both of them walking side by side, hands raised in recognition of the waiting paparazzi, abashed grins on their faces. For a moment, Joo-hyun even forgets about Yoon Min-ki; just lets herself drink in the images of Jung Yong-hwa - a face she hasn’t allowed herself to imagine in months and now displayed before her in full color and clarity on her phone screen. She swallows, a phantom pain forking through her heart, and she presses a hand against it, as if she can physically push it away.
Then her fingers scroll further down the page, and the phantom pain sharpens; mutates into a prickling behind her ears, in her fingers and the image blurs slightly. But she sees it all the same - Jung Yong-hwa’s face, his bright, animated, eyes locked on the indubitably gorgeous woman next to him. It is one of those photos that manage to capture a fleeting moment, all the more telling for its unguardedness - that the woman walking next to him is someone Jung Yong-hwa cares for deeply.
Her phone clatters to the countertop, and Joo-hyun is stunned to find herself breathless, on the verge of unexpected tears.
Stupid Joo-hyun, she thinks, pressing a hand to her suddenly stinging eyelids. Of course, a star like him wouldn’t wait for you. Wouldn’t pine for you. Girls like you are a dime a dozen, and you could never dream of even competing in the same league as Yoon Min-ki.
She shoves her phone into her back pocket. Things are returning to their natural order as you know it. You should be grateful for that, she reminds herself. This is what you wanted.
But the article is only the start of Joo-hyun’s troubles.
A week later, during one of those interminably long, empty afternoon shifts, Joo-hyun is frowning at a cover letter she’s in the middle of composing. This new firm that she’s applying to, GOLIN, is a smaller, boutique firm, but they also have a surprisingly wide range of PR projects, all of which favor social media heavily. It looks like a potentially good fit, which is also why she’s slaving over this cover letter. It has to be perfect.
She is in the middle of scanning the letter for any last mistakes, when the radio, which has been playing blithely in the background for the whole shift, suddenly registers in her conscious mind.
“Goood afternoon, Seoul City. It’s Kim Jin-woo here with you and you’re listening to Pops station, where we bring you the latest in K-pop music. And speaking of latest…”
She isn’t sure for a moment what it is, why she’s suddenly listening to something that has long faded to white noise, since she started working at the convenience store.
“In case you missed it, stay tuned for this very exciting collaboration that JUST dropped. You may have heard about them lately; they’ve been making waves over the Internet…”
It can’t be, she tells herself despite the fact that her heartbeat has started to pick up speed, that her fingertips have turned clammy against her keyboard. No, it’s not possible; there are dozens of couples, celebrities collaborating being announced everyday. It couldn’t be them, it couldn’t possibly be…
“That’s right. I’m talking about hot new couple, Jung Yong-hwa and Yoon Min-ki, who’ve recently dropped a brand new duet together. And we’re going to play it for you right now. Here’s ‘What If I Never Get Over You’.”
What?
For an awful, breathless moment, Joo-hyun briefly considers abandoning her post, just leaving the convenience store to its own devices, because as if the photos weren’t enough, he had to go record a duet with his new girlfriend too?
But she can’t; can’t just leave in the middle of the shift, can’t lose the only job she’s managed to get since coming back and so she just stands there dumbly as the opening bars of the song reverberate throughout the convenience store.
It’s supposed to hurt,
It’s a broken heart
But the moving on is the hardest part
It comes in waves; letting go
But the memory fades, everybody knows
Everybody knows
She hasn’t let herself listen to any songs by them since coming back; hasn’t allowed herself to even touch Youtube, and so hearing his voice - deep, sure and so heart-achingly familiar, unleashes a swell of memories so powerful; it’s all Joo-hyun can do to just stand there, clenching onto her phone, as if she can physically stand against the tidal wave of emotions crashing against her.
And then Min-ki’s voice comes in, perfectly harmonising on the chorus, and it’s as if the last unbroken parts of her heart shatter to pieces.
What if I’m trying
But then I close my eyes
And then I’m right back
Lost in that last goodbye
What if time doesn’t do what its supposed to do -
What if I never get over you?
She can’t. She can’t make herself stand there and pretend like she’s okay; not when someone she cared about so deeply was just seen out with a model, a singer, someone so completely and utterly leagues ahead of Joo-hyun. When he found a better, prettier, more accomplished girl to take her place in his heart, in his music…
Joo-hyun can’t even bring herself to finish that train of thought.
Her body just moves on instinct, as she ducks into the backroom, stumbles out the exit and into the alleyway behind the convenience store.
She is gasping now, choking for breath and for one awful moment, she wonders if she’s going to have a panic attack - and she falls to her knees, scrunching herself up in the smallest possible position as if she can bodily shield herself from any further pain or damage. All the while, tears stream down her face; a dam breached, and she curls in even tighter on herself, clamps her hands over her ears as if she can still hear that damned song playing in the distance.
It isn’t even a thought anymore; but an unconscious wish, a prayer. I wish I had never met you, Jung Yong-hwa, she cries soundlessly. I wish all of this was a dream I could wake up from.
But this is no dream, no nightmare - it’s real life.
She has to go back in there, stand at the counter as the radio repeats the new single, over and over and over again until Joo-hyun loses count of how many times they play it. All the while, she stands there, ringing customers up, offering them the barest ghost of a smile as she tries desperately to dissociate from her physical body. As she tries and fails to block out Jung Yong-hwa singing, what if this never gets better/what if this lasts forever, and ever, and ever…
I’m in hell, she thinks, summoning up the parts of her that still have the capacity to find some kind of twisted humor in this, as she trudges home from work after her shift. There’s no other explanation for it.
It gets slightly better, even as the song repeats and repeats, mindlessly, insipidly over the course of the next week. Maybe her heart starts to regrow around the knife in it. Maybe her armor, her skin gets thicker. Maybe its time - warping his voice until it’s just a song on the radio, and not a song sung by someone who holds a piece of her heart. And in those moments, where she can actually listen to the song objectively, a small part of her wonders - did he write this for me? Am I the one he can’t get over?
But that small part of her gets buried over time; under snippets of interviews that air on the radio, interviewing Yong-hwa and Min-ki about their inspiration behind the song (“everyone’s had thoughts like this after a break up,” Yong-hwa says generally in response. “We just wanted to put it into a song.”) Over new photos that surface of Yong-hwa and Min-ki having dinner together in Su-won, over rumours speculating that Min-ki will join Yong-hwa on the last legs of the tour as a special guest.
And all the while, Joo-hyun trudges on; trawling through job portals in search of suitable openings, working and re-working cover letters for new applications, practicing her responses to imagined interview questions. It’s all that’s left to her now. Yet, she cannot escape the bone-deep weariness that permeates each day; the quivering parts of her heart that wonder, how much more can I take? How much longer can I go on like this?
+++
“Miss Seo Joo-hyun?”
“That’s me.” She says, trying to dredge up a brighter smile. She isn’t sure how well she succeeds though. She isn’t succeeding at much these days.
The interview panel at GOLIN is smaller; just two people - an older woman and a younger man, the CEO and social media manager respectively, and they look at Joo-hyun from across the table. They aren’t smiling, but neither do they exude that instinctive no she’s felt sometimes upon coming into an interview.
“So, we’ve looked at your transcripts, academic records - all highly impressive.”
This is regular; a sign that the interview is proceeding as per normal.
The older woman leans back in her seat; regards Joo-hyun steadily. “What we’d like to hear is your story. How you got into PR, how you decided that this line of work was what you wanted to do, and why you think GOLIN would help you to go further in that journey.”
This is not.
Joo-hyun straightens in her seat; momentarily flustered as her mind racks through the various answers she’s rehearsed before. She’s never practiced for this exact question before, although she could surely cobble together something from various different answers -
But her eyes meet the female CEO’s properly, for the first time since the entire interview started. Maybe it’s something in her expression or her eyes, but in that moment, Joo-hyun feels all her rehearsed answers die away on the tip of her tongue. That should be enough to make her start panicking, but instead, there is an odd calmness, a quiet anticipation - almost as if some part of Joo-hyun herself is waiting to hear the real, honest answer as well.
“I didn’t actually,” She confesses slowly. “I always thought I’d go into the arts, or history, or something non-profit. Maybe teach. It was kind of unexpected, how I got into PR.”
Here is where she should spin her nine months with the band into understandable corporate jargon, into reasons that will position her as the best candidate for the job. As someone capable and competent and worthy of being hired. She needs this role too badly to do otherwise.
But the CEO nods, the faintest flicker of a smile around her lips as she leans back into her chair.
“It all started when I went for a concert with my best friend.” She says, “CNBLUE. They’re our favorite band; we’ve listened to every album they have together. It’s kind of our thing.”
“And then… their lead singer, Jung Yong-hwa… he invited to me come sing with him onstage. There are probably videos of it still, online somewhere.” She ducks her head shyly, because the last thing she wants is them watching videos of her singing. “But we sang together and after that, he invited me to come on tour with them. They’re currently wrapping up a year long tour throughout South Korea.”
The CEO’s eyebrows are raised, the manager leaning forward in his seat.
“I wanted to feel useful on the tour,” Joo-hyun says, allowing memories that she hasn’t explored in months to come to life again in her mind’s eye. “So I asked if I could help them to take pictures for their social media accounts. And pictures led to captions, and captions led to me eventually managing their socials.”
“And I liked it.” She says softly. “I liked that I could tell a story through social media; how I could show them for who they really were - beyond being just idols and celebrities, how they were friends who just really enjoyed making music together. And over time, people started liking these photos, these glimpses into the real CNBlue, and I… I think that’s when I realised how powerful PR could be. How I could take people behind the scenes, show them the full story, draw the curtain to show the people behind the celebrity.”
In the time it takes to draw her next breath, Joo-hyun decides that if she’s gone this far - perhaps it’s time to throw all her chips in.
“Many of the PR firms I’ve interviewed with called my time with the band a waste of time. One of them even called me a groupie,” She recounts, and the memory still stings even after all this time. “I think they didn’t see any value in the work I did with the band. And for a long time, I felt the same way.”
“But maybe,” She says, puzzling out the words for herself as she says them. “Maybe in this interview - maybe you’ve shown me that the value lies in what I’ve learned, more than in what I’ve achieved. And so, if you’re willing to take me on, I will continue learning and put what I’ve learnt to good use for you.”