You Are The Thunder, I Am The Lightning; Hyori/Junghyun

[iasfm]

Title: You Are The Thunder, I Am The Lightning
Author: the_suit_case
Pairing/Focus: Lee Hyori/Lee Jung Hyun
Rating: PG
Word Count: 10,500
Summary: You've been watching her play the audience until they're wrapped around the strands of her hair, until they're bright-eyed and eager, and it makes you wonder what she's got that makes everyone ignore the venom, ignore the jabs and sharp edges and anger. You wonder what it is about her that makes you feel so inarticulate and foolish.



The first time you meet her, she's a mermaid. Long lines, dressed in green and gold, and there's waves in her hair like she's Aphrodite, born out of the ocean. She seems impossibly fragile, impossibly meek, but her face is hauntingly sharp, her lyrics full of corners that you trip against while she's on stage.

She's new. Your group is monochrome and perfect, and she stands out against that, the sea creamy against her skin, her flaws exciting. She stands out against the other groups too, tiny and fierce and indifferent instead of sweet and bubbly and flawless.

There's something small in you that pokes against your skull when you smile at her backstage as you're all lining up and she turns her face away - you think that maybe she's just shy. Shy and overwhelmed and exhausted, like you had been back when you had been freshly debuted, a few months under your belt instead of years.

"I'm Hyori," you tell her when you catch her in the bathroom after her performance.

"Of course you are," she says, and her vowels stick to the roof of her mouth, like she's too lazy to bother and try to get her tongue to curl the right way. "Everyone knows who you are." She doesn't tell you her name, but she doesn't have to; this may be the first time you're meeting her, but it's just because her first song had come out while you were recording and you can already tell she's not the type to go to the industry parties you thrive on.

"I liked your debut song," you tell her as she's washing her hands. She's been watching you in the mirror, up over her shoulder, and her eyes narrow.

"No, you didn't. What do you want?"

"You don't even know me, how can you say that I didn't like your song?"

She turns around; some of her gold eyeshadow has smeared down over her cheekbone and you can see where there's sweat in her hair. You can tell she's sizing you up, deciding what you're made of from this one little conversation where you burst in on her in the bathorom. "What's your new song about?" she asks.

"Falling in love," you tell her. Of course.

"Mine's about being abandoned."

"Our debut song was about being broken up with, too," you say, because it was about crying and rain and being left in the rain while crying.

She doesn't look impressed. "There's a difference between crying because your boyfriend broke up with you and wanting to feel his blood on your hands." When she brushes past you, her hands are still dripping wet, and for the first time in two years, you feel like maybe you don't have the upper hand.

*

She looks too serious and already too bored when you next see her, tucked away in some corner of Elle Girl's studio. She's wearing a towel like a turban and nothing else and everyone is shying away from her and her casual nudity. When you plop down next her, she raises a carefully groomed eyebrow.

You wait for her to say something, anything, but she doesn't, just resumes leafing through backcopies of Elle Girl while her nail polish dries. Her nails are pointed and sharp; they remind you of talons, the red harsh against her too-pale skin. She's like a vulture today, the way she's watching you from the corner of her eye, waiting for you to stop breathing, to scurry back to the safety of Joo Hyun and Yuri and Jin.

"You were right," you say after she's let the silence stretch on so long it's made you uncomfortable. "I don't like your debut song."

She closes her magazine. She looks thoughtful instead of upset like you would have been. "Why?"

"It's too angry," and you have this whole argument about how nice Korean girls shouldn't be angry, they should be demure and calm and accept what's happening, but your whole speech dies in your mouth when her eyes narrow. Her irises shine and you feel like she's about to swallow you whole, but in the end, she just shrugs.

"No, I meant why did you have to lie?"

"It's called being polite. Small talk."

"Oh," she says, her eyes round and her tone surprised and not at all sarcastic. "I like your face." She smiles at you, perfect and crisp, before opening her magazine back up; she makes sure she doesn't linger over the Fin.K.L spread when she notices you still watching. Her stylist leads her away before you can think of anything to say, but she glances back over her shoulder once, and you think for a moment, she's smiling for real.

*

"I think you're cute," she says when she brushes up against you.

"What? The other day, I thought you told me you didn't like my face," you whisper back, and you ignore the glances the rest of your group is giving you from down the line.

"I didn't say I thought your face was cute. I think it's your posture I like."

"We all have the same posture. We learned it in grade one, shoulders back, chin forward."

"Maybe I just like your rearrangement of the basics."

It makes you smile, even though it probably shouldn't. She's so new at this game, but somehow she knows how to push all your buttons, like she's Yuri or Joo Hyun, and knowing her, she's just being nice before she stabs you between the ribs. You've been watching her play the audience until they're wrapped around the strands of her hair, until they're bright-eyed and eager, and it makes you wonder what she's got that makes everyone ignore the venom, ignore the jabs and sharp edges and anger.

She smiles back at you when you're crowding off the stage; it's smaller than yours had been, just a tiny curl of her lip, and you just know in that moment, you're going to spend the rest of your life chasing that smile.

*

You both lose some weekly award to TT Ma, and you're surprised she looks as angry as she does about something like this. She skips the community dressing room and heads straight for the showers. You don't follow her; you know she's vicious enough when she's not upset and you know she doesn't consider you a friend, so you linger in the dressing room until everyone else has filed out and gone home to sulk.

She's still dressed when you go look for her in the shower room, her costume plastered to her skin under the rush of water. The scales sewn into her shirt crinkle loudly when she shifts to look up at you.

"What do you want?" she asks, and you wish you could tell if she's crying.

"Just wanted to see if you had drown yet or used all of KBS's hot water."

"You think I'm pathetic, don't you?"

"I cried every night for the first three months I'd been debuted, and that was while we were winning everything."

She looks up at you. "Stop trying to make me feel better about being a disaster. It's not going to work."

"Don't feel so sorry for yourself. It's not the last time you're going to lose, so don't let it get you down." You reach down and yank her to her feet; she overbalances and presses against you, but you ignore the wetness seeping underneath your clothes. "Come on, we're going drinking."

*

"I'm too serious for this industry," she says when you've got a few glasses of soju in her and you're walking through the cold air back towards her apartment. "No, really, I am," she says when you laugh at her. "I don't want to be as shallow as everyone else, I want my music to mean something."

"How are we shallow?"

"None of you really care about what you do by the time you making it out of training. Management says something and you all jump how they want you, sing what they want you to sing. None of you have anything to do with what you're singing. You don't write it or help with the melody or anything, just memorize what someone else felt at some point."

"Why's that bad? It's still touching people."

"Everyone's always singing these sweet songs about falling in love and breaking up and being strong. I just want people to acknowledge that life isn't really like that."

"People don't fall in love and then break up?"

"No, people aren't strong. We're weak and we're wrong and we hate each other."

"I don't hate anyone," you say.

"Not even strongly dislike?" she asks, and when you shake your head, she snorts. "Not only are you weak and wrong, you're a liar, too."

"I prefer to think of it as bending the truth so no one gets hurt."

She snorts again. "Why bother? No one cares if you hate them. You're just some snobby little idol and in ten years no one's going to even remember you. Why do you waste your time being kind?"

"Why do you waste yours being mean?"

She smiles, and her teeth are pointed, sharp. "At least I'm not pretending to be something I'm not."

You roll your eyes. "Being nice doesn't mean I'm being fake."

"I see no difference."

"Just because you're bitter doesn't mean everyone else is."

"Why is so much of you your public image? Don't you ever drop it?"

"They found me like this," you tell her. "Joo Hyun's always called me the ingénue of the industry, a lost lamb they're shepherding around. Everyone wants to be me, she says."

"Is that why you keep following me around?" she asks, and you can't tell if she's slurring her vowels because she's drunk or because that's what she does when she drops her accent. "Do you think I'm another of your shepherds?"

Why do you keep following her around? You've been asking yourself that for a while, when all she does is lash out at you. "I like your face," you end up telling her.

She doesn't look impressed. Then again, she rarely does. "It's the same as everyone else's. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth."

"Maybe I just like your rearrangement of the basics best."

She seems mostly sober by the time you drag her to her apartment, but she still won't let go of your arm.

"You were really hot earlier," she says after you've got her in bed, covered to the chin her in sheets.

"What do you mean?"

"In the bathroom, telling me to get over myself. Forceful. I liked it."

You make sure you slam her apartment door closed.

*

You're not sure when she does it, but at some point when you weren't looking, she programs her number in your phone, an exclamation point before her name and a heart after it.

It takes you eight weeks to use it, to gather up the strength to press send. Promotions for her first album are over and you haven't seen her anywhere you see everyone else, at industry parties and quiet idol-friendly restaurants and backstage at KBS even though she has no reason to be there. It's what other idols do in their down time, when they catch a few hours or days between promotions.

When you dial her up finally, she doesn't answer the phone. You wait a few days and try again, but she still doesn't answer.

"Jung Hyun, it's Hyori," you say when you call the third time a week later and you know it's time to leave a voice mail so you don't seem like such a creepy stalker. "Just calling to check in and see if you want to hang out sometime." You don't want to say much else because she already thinks you're a goody-goody obsessed freak, so you leave it at that.

It's not all that surprising that she mails you instead of calls, because you don't think you've ever seen her even glance at her phone, let alone speak on it. The message consists of an address and a time and you've only got two hours to get ready and across Seoul. You assume you're meeting her somewhere like the dozens of places you meet your other idol friends, so you dress up a bit, make sure your skirt is a bit shorter than management would approve of and your hair's perfect, so you're a bit disappointed when you get off the train to discover some hole in the wall rock cafe.

"I didn't really expect this to be the kind of place you'd hang out," you say when you find her at a table off to the side. There's two other girls sitting there, one with vivid red hair and the other taller than any girl you've ever met before, and two guys, both completely nondescript.

"Why?"

"Because you're glamorous, and this isn't the place paparazzi should catch you."

"No, I meant why were you thinking about where I hang out?" but she's smiling one of those tiny, rare smiles that make you feel like you're the only person to have ever seen it before. It makes you want to smile back, to make silly promises when really, she doesn't want anything from you at all.

You just shrug, though. "Something to pass the time on the train. I had to come all the way across town, you know."

You sit down and order a drink and both the guys ask you to dance. Jung Hyun chuckles and waves them off. "Stop trying to take my date," she says, and it makes you blush until she's laughing for real, deep and from her ribs, her shoulders shaking and her hair in her face.

It makes your heart flutter.

*

It's a few hours later before you're alone with her, everyone else off dancing. She leans in close and says, "I thought you weren't ever going to call." Her breath is sweet against your face.

You're almost too drunk for this, almost to the point where you're not going to remember any of this tomorrow, just the dim outline of her face, flashes of the streaks of colour in her hair, the sound of the bass thrumming in your veins. "I was scared."

"Of what?" she asks, and her eyes look huge from this close, so dark with flecks of green right around the edges.

You wonder what should would do if you reached out towards her, wrapped your hands in her hair and yanked. You're drunk, you could pass it off as anything, really, but you keep your hands wrapped around your drink. "You."

"Why?"

"Because you're so hot/cold. One minute you're smiling and the next you're snarling and I never know which you're going to be when I look."

"No, why did you call if you're still scared?"

"Maybe I'm not scared enough," you say.

She opens her mouth, but that's when her entourage returns, skidding against the table and knocking her away from you. She smiles when you say you've got to go, got to get home before management realises you've snuck away, before it's already time for you to wake up. She walks you to the front of the club and you don't remember much of the trek home, not after the way her eyes seemed so soft as she was watching you hail a cab.

*

The first time she kisses you, she's wearing contacts so green, they're like limes. Her lips are slick, covered in sweet gloss, and she tastes like the bitter coffee she's just had for lunch. It's nothing romantic, she just grabs you in the hall of SBS and there's a rough press of lips.

"What are you doing?" you ask her when she tilts her head away, her body still pressed against the line of yours. You can see she's flushed, but you don't think it's from embarrassment or anxiety.

"Whatever I want to," she says.

When she leans in again, you let her.

*

It starts off slowly, and it's fun. You meet her at her apartment because yours is full, Yuri and Jin refusing to vacate for the day. She meets you at the door and she's still in her pyjamas, little lambs against her skin, and her hair is still how her stylist did it the night before.

Her apartment is nothing like you expected. You expected it to be dark, full of heavy furniture and deep colours and, you don't even know, maybe a coffin full of her ex-boyfriends' hearts. Instead it looks pretty standard for an idol, white couch, shelves from Ikea, purple where yours is yellow and orange.

"I used to share with two girls from my first label, but they couldn't really deal with my hours," she says when she's showing you around and the bathroom is decorated in Mickey Mouse. "I never really got around to redecorating when they jumped ship."

"It's cute," you say, your fingers lingering over the polka dot cups in the drying rack. "You miss them."

She rolls her eyes at you. "I don't miss anyone," she says. "I've never seen the point."

"How lonely."

You can tell she wants to snort, to roll her eyes again and tell you how ridiculous you're being and how she doesn't put up with superfluous emotions, but she just reaches out for you instead.

You think it's the best way she could have answered.

*

"Come to this party with me," you say.

She barely even looks up from the paperwork she's slowly making her way through.

"It'll be fun," you tell her. "Jun Jin's hosting it."

"If I already told him no, what makes you think I'd tell you yes?"

You hadn't really thought about it, Jung Hyun having industry friends. The way you picture her, she ignores them, off to the side, more beautiful than anyone else because of the aura that makes her unapproachable. Whenever you're on shows together, you never see anyone else trying to get her attention, anyone else try and sit beside her, try and get her to smile like you do.

The next time you see her phone laying around, you flip through her address book. You feel like a voyeur for it, like you're invading her privacy, but it's not like she tells you anything on her own. You're surprised by what you find, dozens and dozens of names you recognise, people you've sat beside and battled against on a thousand different variety shows.

"Hyolee, what are you doing?" she asks when she sneaks up beside you. She always calls you Hyolee, like your fans do, but there's always a curl of her lip involved and you can never tell if it's a smirk or a smile.

"I'm spying on you," you say, because you've learned not to even try and fool her, she'll just ask questions until you break your story.

"Why?" she asks and you've come to learn that when she asks you why, she never means what you think she will, what you want her to. You try to break down what she wants before you answer, but somehow, you're always wrong.

"Because you never tell me anything."

"No, I meant, why now and not when I was too busy to catch you?"

"Thrill of the chase, I guess."

She grimaces, but goes to the party with you as penance.

*

They start parading her around with Han Chae Young, and every time you open a magazine and see them smiling back at you, you feel like you should be petty and fling the magazine across the room. You see why it's a good idea, Miss Charisma and Korea's Barbie, trumped up like a pair of 1920's American starlets, sharp and perfect in a way you never look beside Jung Hyun. There's rumours of them getting a movie, a drama, a radio show, but really, nothing happens besides dozens of photo shoots and guest appearances. You know you shouldn't be so jealous, so strung out and nervous and tight-chested, not when they do the same exact thing to you and Joo Hyun.

"They want me to get some paparazzi shots with Chae-nim tonight."

"Why?"

"They think it'll be a good idea for us to be seen outside of the work place together."

"No, I meant why tonight?" You've been doing that lately, changing what she thinks you mean, but it never aggravates her like it does you.

"We're going to Shinwha's show."

"And you can't go tomorrow?"

"It's Jun Jin's birthday tonight. We're going to sing to him."

"Okay," you say, and you hang up before she says any of the pleasantries she usually says before she lets you hang up, breathe your name and count down the minutes until she'll see you again. You know she does it for you, not because she'll miss you or needs the reminder. No, she just knows how you rely on that kind of thing, roses and promises and her eyes full of stars she never means.

She sends you a message around midnight, asking what your problem is, but if she doesn't know, you're not going to tell her, even if it's been a year since she kissed you and you know you've got to lay things like this out for her.

*

You're crying when you tell her, when you show up on her doorstep at three in the morning on a Wednesday. "We're breaking up," you say when she opens the door in the yellow bathrobe you bought her for Christmas and nothing else.

"We are?" she asks, and she closes the door a fraction of an inch, like she still thinks you're upset about Han Chae Young.

"No, Fin.K.L. Joo Hyun's doing a solo album."

"That doesn't mean you're breaking up," and she finally opens the door enough for you to slip past her.

"Management says we're as good as broken up. We're not doing anything else as a group. Ever."

"Why?"

"I don't know, we're still at the top."

"No, I meant why didn't you see this coming? They barely promoted your last single at all."

It's enough to make you stop crying, when you start trying to look back for clues.

"What are you going to do?" she asks you while you're distracted.

When you tell her, "Die," you're completely serious.

She's never taken you seriously though, so she just rolls her eyes. "Stop being melodramatic, Hyolee." She wraps her arm around you, and you close your eyes against her hair and feel a little less like disappearing.

*

You feel stronger when you leave at dawn, when you trek back to your dorm to face Joo Hyun, to stand next to Jin and Yuri as nothing. You're not sure what they're really going to do with you all now that they're done with you as a group.

You think that's probably what hurts the most, how your agency has spent so long, spent so much money and energy and effort on making the four of you one. You can't really picture what's going to happen in a few months when they're finished tearing you apart, when your soul's been stretched across Seoul in four different apartments.

Jin spends days crying, her face red and sore, and Yuri's angry, hitting walls and whoever gets in her way. You try to keep to yourself, lock yourself in your room and listen for when Joo Hyun comes back from her recording sessions, her first PV filming. You want to feel betrayed, want to feel abandoned and belittled, but Joo Hyun's going through everything you are, times two, forced to leave you all behind on somebody else's whim.

You're the first to move out of the Fin.K.L dorm into an apartment with just your manager all the way across town. It's two weeks after Joo Hyun's first single hits the top ten and everything's too tense for you to take it any longer.

Management comes to you after your tantrum and tells you you're going to do your own album while Joo Hyun's still promoting hers. You waver about it, write out lists and lists and lists of pros and cons on yellow stationary at Jung Hyun's apartment, because you're not sure what you want anymore.

"What are you waiting for?" she asks you, and her eyes are big like they are when she's genuinely curious and not mocking you.

"I'm scared. What if I'm not good enough on my own?"

"This isn't like you, Hyolee," because she always thinks you're better than you are, stronger. More like her. "I thought this is what you'd always wanted."

"No, what I always wanted was a pair of platform boots like Baby Spice. That's what I was looking for when they trapped me."

She snorts. "You weren't trapped. You love this life. The parties and the glam and the awards. Just think, once you record and start getting your own number one singles, you're not going to have to share with Jin or Yuri or even Joo Hyun."

It's not what you want, but you know that once you let the limelight slip away, Jung Hyun is going to lose interest in you. You're not even sure what has her interest now, what's had her interest for the past two years, but you're not going to let go of whatever it is that has her next to you.

*

It's not as weird as you thought it'd be, being alone. It's not as stressful, as rushed, as hectic, any of the things you always thought it'd be. The hours are longer and you're worn thin, but your first single does better than Joo Hyun's had, better than Jung Hyun's latest.

Jung Hyun disappears at the height of your promotions and when you ask her where she's been, she's increasingly tight lipped about it.

"Aren't you happy for me?" you ask her. "You made me do this."

"Of course I'm happy for you, Hyolee," she says, but you've never seen her look less kind. "I'm just too busy to always be sticking to your side, showing up backstage when you want me to sit around as part of your entourage. I have a career to think about, too, you know."

"I know, it's just, I'm there to support you when you need it."

"That's where you're wrong. I don't need it." She storms out, even though it's her apartment, slamming the door and kicking the wall down the hall. You sit on the floor of her living room and wait for her to come back, but she doesn't.

It's another week before you learn about her Chinese drama.

*

You've always known she always puts an awful amount of thought into things that go entirely unnoticed, which is probably why she's so frustrated with herself.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says when she collapses in your apartment after hours and hours of practice with her language coach.

You stroke her hair, lace loops around your fingers until you're so wrapped up in her she can't move.

"I don't know why I ever thought this was a good idea."

You don't want to say anything, because you're still bitter she never told you, that she kept it secret for so long and you found out due to overhearing Jun Jin, and you know if she'd ever told you about it, you would have counted out the reasons she shouldn't. You've always been practical. "You'll be fine," you tell her. "Everyone always loves you."

The thing of it is, everyone always does love her. It's always strange, watching as others throw themselves at her. She's always gracious about it, which always surprises you because she's never gracious about anything else. "I've got a boyfriend," she tells them, and it always gives you a flash of warmth. You're not sure what the warmth means, if you're happy because you know she has you or if you're jealous that she's pretending you're something you're not.

"What about you though?" she asks.

You smile and kiss her and hope it's enough.

*

You used to be the type of girl that fell in love a thousand times a day, and every time it was forever. You've always known you're crazy about infatuation, the butterflies in your stomach and your head swimming and your knees getting weak, about another person laying against your skin, chasing that feeling. You've been in love and fell out of love more times than you can count, the boy down the street, the man in the coffee shop, Yuri, Lee Min Woo.

You've fallen in love with impressions, ideas, the shape of someone's eyes. You love people who wear certain colours, couples holding hands, smiles and frowns. You've loved books and coffee and the men who loved them too.

You've done crazy things for love before, trekked across Korea to chase a boy in high school, dyed your hair when you heard Kangta liked lighter haired girls, serenaded Eugene backstage at Happy Together: Friends.

You've sang songs with someone in mind, written their name in magic marker on your wrists under your stage costume.

You've loved fiercely and you've loved tender. You've been passionate and you've been casual. You've never loved anyone like you love Jung Hyun.

*

You like to write her letters, leave them in her kitchen or in her car or maybe her purse, something where she'll suddenly find it and think, oh.

You're careful to make them generic in case she drops them on the street, throws them in a trash can and a fan digs them out, so you start each one with a giant heart. You don't bother signing them, not when she knows your handwriting and her stationary and the little loops you add at the edges of the paper.

You know she doesn't keep them because you've seen her pull them from between the pages of her scripts and toss them aside, a careful little smile on her face. You're never sure what that smile means, so small and secretive and harsh, it can't mean anything good.

You make her mix tapes too, because she's never gotten the hang of cds, a tape deck in her car and a cassette player in her kitchen. You record songs off the radio, love songs and little jingles you know she can't get out of her head.

You always put them in her glove box, and the next time you look, it's always gone, into her collection or in her tape deck or walkman. They all have funny names, broken bits of English song lyrics that you jot down when you're barely paying attention, your letters crooked in sharpie.

When she's gone, you write her emails, long passionate ones, ones that make you giggle and blush, and you sign them Love, Hyori.

She rarely writes you back, and when she does it's a list of her schedule. You save them all anyways, saved in their own folder. When she's silent for days, you open them up and read them one by one and wish you weren't so starved and pathetic.

*

Jung Hyun doesn't do regret; she lives every single second like she knows it's her last. She drives too fast and smokes too much and goes out in crowds without a disguise. You've never heard her apologize, even when she knows she should to unruffle feathers, do damage control.

That's probably why you find yourself suddenly in Japan with her when you should be promoting your number one album. "Don't you ever want to travel?" she'd asked.

"Of course, but later, when I've got time."

"What if you never get time?"

You give in to her because you always give in to her. She takes you on a tour of her new agency, her Japanese soft and spilling off her tongue too effortlessly for her to only have been learning a few months like she claims. When she's done, she takes you for parfaits and kisses you in the back of the restaurant over ice cream and syrup.

You push her away, but she doesn't listen, she never does. "We're not home. No one knows who we are here."

"We're still two girls kissing in the back of a parfait shop."

"No one cares," she says, but you put your hand up anyways.

"It doesn't matter. You know it could still get back and then where would I be?" because yes, you're suddenly Korea's highest paid female celebrity, but before you it was someone else and where's she now? You know she's still around, still singing and dancing, but she's not the top anymore. You know how easy it would be to fall, to crash, to have backlash against something like this.

Not that Jung Hyun's worried about it because she's got China to fall back on, and when she's done with China, she's got Japan. You wonder who's doing better, you with all of Korea spread before you, or her with bits and pieces of all of Asia in her pockets.

*

Jung Hyun doesn't do grateful very well either. "You shouldn't have, Hyolee," and it's not like when other people say it, she really means it, you shouldn't do anything for her. When she wins awards, she never thanks her manager or her mother or even her fans.

"You shouldn't have," she says again, and her voice is cold like it always is when she's off-screen. You can hear the chill all the way in Korea, like the Sea of Japan is frozen over.

"I wanted to," you say, because you had, you always want to show her the million little ways you love her.

"I can do this on my own," she says. "I don't need you to try and boost my sales back home."

"I just mentioned I had your last album on repeat."

"Three times, Hyolee. You mentioned it in three different places. Someone's going to start putting things together and think you're doing some kind of publicity stunt. Everyone knows you don't even like my music."

"You're being ridiculous," you tell her.

"Just stop it, okay?"

When you're quiet, she takes it as agreement.

*

When she finally comes back from Japan, you spend a week in her apartment. "Don't you have work?" she asks on the fourth day when you refuse to come out from under her sheets.

"I quit," you say.

"You're a horrible liar. You'll never quit."

"I'm recovering from my exhausting album promotion. I start work on my next album on Wednesday," you tell her. "They're guessing it's going to do better than the first now that I've established myself."

She's across the room, but you can see how her shoulders tense. It's a sore spot, you know, how you're always better than her in the rankings, always at the very top, lightyears away from what she could produce. Oh, she's got her fans, but she still strives to be at the top, to be better than you. "Oh. Who are you getting to work with you?" and her tone is perfectly casual, just like you hate.

You shrug, because you're not her, you don't have any real say in your album, nothing to do with the work behind it. You show up and sing what they put in front of you and she'd never say it out loud, but she hates you for it.

She leaves the room because you know she's stewing, she always gets this way when you bring it up. You let her and stay down, keeping the sheets body-warm. She'll come back in a few hours, exhausted from running, and she'll lay against your back and you know, that's as close as she'll ever get to admitting she's jealous.

*

It's hard to be around her when she's tired, and these days, she's always exhausted. You know she's working hard because her vocal cords are bleeding and her limbs are raw. When you see her, she's blank-faced instead of snarling. Lackluster instead of indifferent.

You pet her hair and she groans against your shoulder. It's the first time you've seen her in a week, even though you know she's been through your apartment daily. She's studying Japanese and trying to remember Chinese and relearning Korean and promoting an album and filming a drama, and you wonder how she doesn't explode, how she can stretch herself so thin and still survive.

She doesn't complain because it's not her way, she doesn't want to be coddled and petted and pampered, but you do it anyways, tighten your fingers against her scalp when she tries to move away, to get away from whatever comfort you're trying to give her. You think your entire relationship has been like that, you forcing yourself on her, and it makes you weary until you feel her relax.

She stretches out, the notches of her spine popping with each slight move. You want to run your fingers over them, to smooth out the stress and offer something different. "When you're done this season, you should take a vacation," you say, your voice as soft as you can make it.

"When I'm done with this season, it'll be time to record my Japanese album, and then it'll be time for China."

When's it time for me? you want to ask her, because she's here in Korea for the time being, but you know, her mind is seven hundred miles away where pre-production is setting up for her Japanese drama and on the six performances she's got left of I Love You, Chul Soo.

You don't ask her though, because she's short-tempered and foul these days, and the slightest thing will set her off, storming through the apartment and flinging picture frames from shelves before she dissolves into a blank-faced robot.. You've always wondered how she keeps so much anger inside of her, how she can keep it all bottled up and out of reach from the public.

"I just wish we had more time, just you and me," you end up saying, hoping it's soft enough, sweet enough.

She tenses up again but you kiss her before she can say anything derogatory; you can't wait until her Japanese schedule is over once and for all.

*

You've gotten used to being alone over the years, because even when she's in town she's absent-minded. It's nothing new to sit at home by yourself or hit up the clubs with your girls or go to premiers with a gaggle of people from your agency. Your fans and most of the industry don't even realise you're friends, let alone something more, as often as you're seen without her. You're always unattached, they say, always ready to flirt and pretend for cameras.

You smile at her texts from the corners of dark bars and pretend they're from someone else when the idols around you ask. It's different from what you expected when you'd approached her all those years ago. You hadn't expected this, and maybe if you had, you would have thought you could change her, change who you both were.

It's better like this though, the music washing over you. It's never been a part of who you are, not deep inside where you breathe it, but you love it, love to dance and twirl and sing made-up lyrics with whomever you've dragged out. It works for you, you know, keeps things out of the spotlight if you're out with someone different every night.

Whenever you cross paths with her by accident, it always makes you freeze for a second, your eyes fused to hers. She smirks, soft and sharp all at once. "Hyolee," she sings, and Daniel Henney laughs from beside you.

"I didn't know you two even knew each other," he says when he's hugging her, and for a moment, you wonder if she's feeling what you feel every time you run across her and Jun Jin, that tight stretch in your stomach.

"We're old friends," you tell him. "Debuted around the same time."

"Ancient history," she says with a careless wave of her fingers. She's with her entourage, the one you've never felt entirely comfortable with.

"And you never told me?" he says. "For shame, Hyori."

"You know I know everyone," you play it off, because really you do.

"Share our table," he tells Jung Hyun, and he points to it at the back of the club, roped off and being held down by Daniel's latest fling, an American with red curls.

"No, I wouldn't want to intrude. I'll see you another time, Hyolee," like she's not going to see you later tonight, in the dark at her apartment. She's always downplayed everything.

He laughs again as she's walking off. "You really do know everyone in the industry, don't you?"

You watch Jung Hyun secure her own table, surround herself with her own people, and wonder how you ever thought you could merge the two of you.

*

Jun Jin is her best friend, and you know, if she let herself, she could love him so easily. It would be easier, you know. They would be beautiful together, sharp angles and sharp eyes and sharp words.

She once gave an interview where she talked about how she once thought Jun Jin was in love with her, and you can see why, because he's affectionate, so fond of her, reaching out to brush the hair out of her face. It makes you freeze, some small part of you close up and refuse to breathe, the way she laughs, starlight in her eyes. You wonder why she doesn't look so perfectly happy for you, why it's always small smiles and indulgent eyes.

You wonder why she can't be so perfectly herself with you, because you've seen them together, sitting quietly to the side at parties you've dragged her to, his arm a touch too casual around around her shoulders.

She always leaves with him, and there's rumours floating around about the two of them, thick as thieves, but you know when you knock on her door she's going to be alone. You don't even know why the two of you pretend anymore, why you live across town when the only time you're there is when she's with you.

It's strange, none of your best friends knowing anything about her, just the coy little smiles she throws their way. They assume it's just because you know everybody, old groups and newly debuted starlets and managers and retired coordi-girls. You wonder if it how she gets her kicks, barely greeting you on the street, backstage when there's too many eyes, but counting the freckles on your ribcage in her living room at night.

You wonder if she'd be this way if she was with someone she didn't have to hide, if she wasn't an idol with so much riding on being approachable. You wonder what she'd be like with someone like Jun Jin, smiling so beautiful on the streets. Her lipstick would match his tie and the people would whisper "perfect," and they'd be so flawless you wouldn't even be able to be upset.

But then again, you know Jung Hyun. You know how she hordes what she loves, keeps her cards close to her chest. You wonder why that doesn't comfort you.

*

You're not really sure what she's up to, because she's always been quiet. She lays around her apartment with you while you're running lines and she watches you get dressed in the mornings.

"What are you going to do today?" you ask her when you're grabbing your duffel bag at five in the morning and she rolls over, her eyes barely open a crack.

"I'm going to write," she says, and when you come home from filming she's still there, like she hasn't moved a muscle all day..

"You're wasting away here," you tell her.

"Prove it," she says, and she plays a bit of something she's working on with your guitar.

"You'll never sing that in front of anyone else," you say.

"Why not?"

"Because that's too real for you. You do angry, not heartbroken."

She doesn't admit it, but she leaves the lyrics sitting on your kitchen table and you wonder where her fight has gone.

*

She goes and spends six months in China writing songs about lost love, and when she comes back, she's somehow lost all her harshness, all the points and angles that stick out of her. It used to be her comfort zone, you know, the spikes and thorns, and you barely remember what it's like to bleed because of all those pretty edges when she wraps her arms around you.

"I missed you," you tell her, whisper against her hair a thousand times until it's the only sound in the room.

"I missed you, too, Hyolee," she says when you're done, but you know it's just for show, something she knows you need, she's never wasted the time missing anyone.

"What are you going to do, now that you're back?" you ask her, and you hope she isn't about to fly off to Japan, another single, another drama, anything to keep her away from you. You hope she isn't just tired and drained.

"I don't know," she says, and it makes you hate what she's become, so unsure, so dead, the listless gleam in her eyes even as she's trying to remember how to draw blood.

"I worry about you," you say, and there should be a contemptuous edge of her laughter, but it's missing, left somewhere down in China.

"Don't," and she leaves it at that, holing herself up in your apartment like she never plans on coming out.

*

You know you should be more worried about her than you are. You should be hovering, coddling, trying to coax her out of whatever depression she's dragged herself into. But... you don't. You wonder what it says about you when you're letting the love of your life fade into nothing, her cheeks gaunt and pale. You wonder if you should call her manager, or maybe Jun Jin, anyone else who could deal with it easier than you are.

You don't though. Instead you weave your fingers in her lank hair and pull her face up as you go to kiss her goodbye. She doesn't react, just turns her face towards yours like she needs your breath. You leave her laying there as you head out for filming and barely think twice about it.

You wish you would be stronger, that you didn't need her any way you can get her. You wish you could do something for her, be brave for her. But the truth of the matter is, you like her like this, her needing you for a bit of normality. She relies on you, barely scoffs at you when you get romantic notions in your head.

"Hyolee," she says, and it's a whimper, a fraction of what she was. She looks rumpled and sweet underneath you.

You wonder why it feels so wrong.

*

One day you come back from rehearsal and she's gone, a note written in green ink carved in your refrigerator door, she's gone home. You follow her, of course; you've always followed her when you can.

When she answers the door, she's suddenly all angles again, sharp and unforgiving. She cuts when you brush up against her unexpectedly, and it's a small thrill to have her back. You wonder how she brought herself out of it, how she convinced herself to sneer and leave broken bones in her wake.

You ask for a lemonade and she brings you a soda. You only live once, she tells you, with her hair slicked back and perfume on her neck. It's everything you love about her, polish and confidence and elegance, but there's a small, bitter place in your heart that already misses her being meek, mild, everything you'd wanted before you'd met her.

*

The thing about Jung Hyun is, everyone thinks she's warmth when really she's frigid. She's like ice, so cold she burns when you linger too long.

So it doesn't really surprise you when she ignores you at the Golden Disk Awards.

She's not up for anything because she hasn't done anything new in Korea in over a year, but she's there anyways, sitting in the back where she's trying not to draw attention to herself. You hadn't known she was coming so you can't take your gaze off her, your eyes wandering back towards her every so often, her red dress against her creamy skin.

You find her afterwards, still sitting at that table, laughing like she'd never been missing, like she hadn't spent six months hiding in China and then six months under your sheets, afraid to come out and face the world. Jun Jin's got his hand on her elbow, like he's worried she's going to fly to pieces or disappear like smoke. She smiles when she sees you, her fingers curling like she wants to reach out for you.

She doesn't.

"Hyolee," she says. "Sorry you didn't win."

"What would I have won? I did a drama this year, not a record," you remind her.

She shrugs, and you can tell she's drunk, and you wonder why, because Jung Hyun's always got to be in control when she's not breaking down. You wonder if she's as collected as she's been pretending, if you should still be wary, watch her closer. "I always think you should win every year."

Jun Jin laughs, tight, and stands up. "I think it's time for you to go home," he says against her ear, just loud enough that you can hear it. "Let's go."

She shakes her head. "Don't worry. Hyolee'll take me home, won't you?"

"Sure," you say, even though you'd been planning on hitting Ivy's celebration bash.

She follows you to your manager's car and sits quiet in the back. When she thinks you're not paying attention, her nails dig into your skin. She's wearing them pointed, painted red, like she always has. Her gaze is heavy against you.

"What?"

"Nothing," she says. "I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"What you're going to do at the end."

"At the end, I'm going to die," you say, because isn't that what she wants to hear?

She smiles; you know she's never cared if when she smiles it looks cruel. "Aren't we all?"

It's too much really, having her back, a night of parties, so you just smile back and tell her to go to sleep, you'll wake her when you get there.

*

Sometimes she gets nostalgic for things that haven't even happened. "One day, we'll run away to Paris," she whispers against your hair at night. "We'll eat fresh bread for breakfast and spend hours at the Louvre. I want to show you the Mona Lisa."

You always whisper that you'll follow her anywhere, and you know you would, but in your heart, you're more practical. What would you do in Paris? Would she resent you, a few years down the road when it's just been you and her, alone in a sea of different culture? A world where the lights aren't pointed at her, where she isn't recognised everywhere she goes?

Would you really be prepared to make her hate you?

She looks sweet in the moonlight, her hair smudged across her face, fantasy clinging to her skin. "We'll walk along the Seine and go to the gardens," and she's breathless. You wonder why she's like this now, romantic, when she used to be so indifferent.

You kiss her just to stop her and you think when it changed, why you're so pragmatic these days.

*

She takes her collection of lost love songs and records an album while you blink. Before you know it, she's off in China, even though she's already filming a serial drama. It's strange, all this energy she suddenly regained.

"I love China," she says one Tuesday afternoon. She's flown up for filming, something small they need done for a flashback they'd forgotten to do when she was still around.

"What's so great about it?" you ask, bitter, because it's far and you miss her, and you've gotten worse at denying yourself what you want.

"The people. It's a completely different story there."

You blink at her through the soured makeup you're still wearing from the night before. "What's wrong with this story?"

"It's old," she says, but she reaches out and grabs your wrist. "I've already heard it a thousand times." It's strange when her eyes are soft.

You just sigh.

*

Your mother calls and asks when you're going to get married.

"I'm only twenty-nine," you tell her.

"All your friends from school are married now. You're going to lose your appeal if you get much older."

You blink at the phone. "But my career..."

"You don't even date. Why don't I read about your dating scandals when I go on your fansites?"

"I don't have time to date. I'm recording an album."

"Why don't I set up a blind date for when you're done with promotions?"

"I have a drama."

She's quiet, and you can feel her disappointment radiating off the phone. "I just don't want you to be alone," she finally says.

"I won't be forever, I promise."

She doesn't sound happy about it though.

*

"I could tear you apart and you'd probably let me." She stretches her fingers out, shapes them like a claw before dragging her nails lightly up your arm.

"Probably," you agree, but she doesn't even try, just kisses you asleep.

It's something you like about her, how she knows she's harsh, knows she's thorns and blood and scabs, but she's gentle when she touches you. You've always liked that about her, how she spits venom at everyone else.

"I want to, sometimes," she says. It's been long enough that she probably thinks you're asleep, about to drool in her hair, but you're not. You stay awake late at night, listening to her breathe, because you know each night could be the last before she's off to a dozen different countries.

"Why?"

She barely jumps. "You're not afraid to try. I'm terrified about what I have to do next." She's never used the pretty words other people have to hide their weaknesses. When she's scared, she's scared, and she's never seen the point in hiding it from you.

"What are you doing next?"

"I'm going to leave my agency."

"What?"

"When my contract expires, I'm not re-signing."

You turn over so you can see her; she looks blue in the moonlight, her eyes opened big like a doll.

"I'm done doing what they want me to do." Which makes you want to laugh because no one's more in-charge of what they do that Lee Jung Hyun. It's something that you've always loved about her, how unafraid she is when she performs, when she dresses up like an alien and sings what she means, plotted out in black and white and set to red melodies, when everyone else around sings happy-go-lucky, falling in love songs in their pastel dresses. "I'm going to start my own agency. I decided last year, when I was so down."

"Last year? Why didn't you tell me then?"

"I wasn't sure what all I was going to have to do. Really, it was just something to get me moving again."

"What can I do to help?" you ask.

"Nothing," she says, and she touches your face so softly, you want to crumble underneath her fingers. "Just be here."

"Of course," you tell her. "Always."

*

Sometimes, you wish you could be as eloquent and brave as she thinks you are. You wish you could just tell her, instead of hiding things in the lyrics of the song you helped write on your new album, some filler song your producer felt matched your image well enough.

You wonder if she knows it's about her, the cadence and the way the words move, lilting like the way she shapes her vowels. You wonder if she really gets it, how she still fascinates you. You wonder if she really knows how much you're pretending for her.

"Hyolee," she says, pressing into your touch, your hands against the tilt of her ribs, and for a moment, you believe she knows everything you've ever wanted to say.

*

It's been three weeks since you've last heard from her, but it's normal. You're both at the top with a thousand different things on your schedules and sometimes it's hard to catch sight of yourself in a mirror, let alone another person dealing with the same thing. When you get a few hours to yourself, you like to let yourself in her apartment and slip in between her green sheets. Sometimes she comes home - you can tell because she'll leave her change of clothes at the foot of the bed, you'll hear the shower running as you're sprinting out the door to reach MTV on time, there'll be a mug of tea waiting for you in the kitchen - but she doesn't bother you, doesn't wake you up with kisses and teases, and really, you're so tired you can only be thankful.

You smile when you see her name on your phone, the three minute message she's left you making your phone blink in the darkness of your room.

"I'm sorry," she says, even though she's always been completely unapologetic.

"You'll be fine on your own," she says, because she'd be fine on her own, if you were the one leaving her. She's never needed anybody.

"We'll be better off apart. We're holding each other back. You need to grow, Hyolee."

She's always thought you were stronger than you are.

You save that message in your voicemail and sometimes, when you're especially lonely, you replay it. You wait for the moment her voice cracks. Not because she was crying. Jung Hyun's never cried over you. You spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what that small hesitation means.

*

You go out and party with whoever you can convince. You've always been a heavy drinker, your solution for everything, but Daniel Henney gets worried, sets a watch.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks everyday.

"The love of my life broke up with me," you finally tell him one morning after he's watched you all night, running around, making a fool out of yourself. It's cold out and you're wrapped in his sweatshirt.

"The love of your life? You don't even date."

"That's why I haven't dated. We've been together for ten years."

He doesn't look like he believes you, but you probably wouldn't believe it yourself.

"Let's get married," he says. "That'll show him. I don't understand why anyone would break up with you, Hyori."

Hyori. Not Hyolee. "No, I decided I'm never going to get married. I'm just going to wait."

"Okay, but if you keep destroying yourself, there's not going to be anything for him to come back to."

Of course not, but some days, you're not sure if that's not the point.

*

When you're feeling particularly pathetic, you pretend she never left you, she's just in China for the weekend, just like she goes every month. You write her letters that you'll leave around her apartment for her to find when she comes back, tucked in her refrigerator behind her orange juice, buried in her gym bag.

You dial her number a dozen times, but she never answers, and the thirteenth time, her phone number's been disconnected. You wonder when you became that kind of girl, bitter and clingy, everything Jung Hyun's always hated.

You never really thought it would end like this, her favourite jacket still hanging in your closet and the apartment she's always lived in emptied out. You figured it would be explosive, some scandal, something solid instead of this limbo. You see her face every time you turn around, 007, her comeback where she's finally standing completely on her own.

When you release your new album, you make sure it's when hers is due out. If she won't answer your calls, at least you'll get to see her backstage. You don't remember being this petty, but it's been ten years.

Her album's angry and yours is colourful, and you can't imagine matching any less. Not that you ever have, but it's kind of what you've always wanted.

You send her a message on cyworld, wishing you good luck, but you're at the point where you're not surprised when she doesn't answer back.

*

It's weird, seeing her now. It's weird, seeing her and not waiting to catch her eye, waiting for her face to light up, starlight falling out of your eyes. It's weird, still wanting her, but unable to reach out.

She gives off fragments of laughter, broken little shards that litter the air and you want to gather them all up, rub them across your skin until you're bleeding, anything for her to notice you. She doesn't though, just stands towards the back. You keep to the front, where you've always been, and wonder if this has all been about social-standing, her proving something to one of you.

When they pull her secrets out, her smile is radiant.

You'd always wondered when she was going to find someone more interesting, more together, more collected, someone more like her. You just never really expected her to do it under your nose.

It's haunting, when she talks about her boyfriend, the one she's always had secreted off in another country. You remember her teasing you about him, breaking idols hearts with stories about him and you always thinking she meant you. It makes you wonder what you were to her, what he really is to her, because you spent forever in her bed. You wonder if he ever second-guesses her, if she's always told him stories about this girl waiting at home to keep him on edge.

You wonder if that's why China's so important to her, why she came back that one time almost dead, what he'd done to her that made her chose him.

*

"You used to be stronger," she says when she catches you in the same bathroom it all started in, ten years ago. You're broken down, sitting on the floor of one of the stalls, and she stands at the same sink as she had last time. "You didn't used to let the little things get you down like this."

"That was before," you say, and you're training your eyes away from her, your voice thickened with cigarette smoke and lies.

"Before what?" she asks.

"Before you." Before she made you believe you were more than you are.