kyuha | five years and counting
Title: Five Years and Counting
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Younha
Genre: slice of life, romance, fluff
Rating: G
A/N: Of June (pt. 4) alternate title is “I’m staring at all these lights and I am going blind.” but 'Five Years and Counting' fits a little better haha~
wordcount: 1648
Their first meeting is understated and punctured with nervousness. It starts with a twenty-year old Cho Kyuhyun and the unfamiliar but (very) pretty girl sitting beside him on a dreary Saturday afternoon in the recording studio. Their producer hasn’t arrived yet, and the tech staff are too busy prepping the equipment to care about the two of them. Besides, they’re singers, the staff are there to turn knobs and type numbers and letters, making sure everything technical runs smoothly. Kyuhyun wonders how today is going to go, it’s the first recording session he’s making -- for his debut single. And who that girl is, he doesn’t know.
It takes another fifteen minutes of aching wait before Kyuhyun finds out that she is Go Younha and will be providing backing vocals for him.
They finish recording Younha’s parts the next day, but Kyuhyun is due for more refinement. He doesn’t expect Younha to be there the next day, smile on her face, carrying words of encouragement and support.
When they finish recording, Kyuhyun asks her if she’d like to have dinner with him. After all, it was only right for him to thank her for appearing on his song.
He quite likes the way she smiles and says yes.
Kyuhyun rises through the ranks of the music industry hierarchy quickly, one of those singers who could actually sing, who didn’t need the thousands of dollars poured into a flashy music video and a skin-baring photoshoot. Cho Kyuhyun with the voice listeners could not forget, Cho Kyuhyun, the nation’s most eligible bachelor. He is very successful at twenty-three, the nation’s favourite young man.
Younha’s career though, does not take off. She is just as talented as him, if not more, with an ear perfectly attuned to the ivory keys of the piano, and a voice he would listen to for hours on end and never be tired of. However, Younha is not tall, she is not curvy, she is not the glamorous young woman the nation likes to see on the pages of a magazine, so she does not become the nation’s sweetheart, far from it. Younha stays another one of the people on the street you walk past without sparing a glance. She gets some awards, she sees #1 sometimes, but a year later, when Kyuhyun texts Younha “Happy Birthday” in the car, he only hears her on radio.
Younha has graduated from singer to DJ.
Kyuhyun nags at his manager until he lands a spot on her radio show, and on air, he loses most of his logical thinking capacity and by the time they’re off air, Kyuhyun suspects that his manager is going to flame him for flirting with Younha (but he isn’t sure about if he really did either). As they’re pulling their headphones off, Younha looks at him, amused. “Piano girl? Seriously?”
He smiles a little guiltily (but only a little) and nods, “Yeah. The perfect piano girl.”
She gives him the smile he could never decipher and ushers in the staff member who is armed with a camera. There are peace signs and smiles and funny faces and then Kyuhyun disappears, wishing he had said something more.
He misses her one hundred day anniversary as a radio DJ, but he settles for bringing her flowers the next day. “Happy one-hundred and one-th anniversary?”
Younha raises an eyebrow, “You’re just trying to make up for missing the one hundred day mark.”
“No,” Kyuhyun says, “It’s just that I love you.”
She smiles wider than he has ever seen, ever and she tells him rather sheepishly, “I love you too.”
Just like that.
Kyuhyun gets tired of his life sometimes. The fans are overbearing sometimes, what with them and their “oppa, saranghae”s every time he is recognised in open air. There are shipper fans too, and whenever they gush over him and that co-actress in that low-key drama, Kyuhyun gets a mysterious pain in his head (although that might be imagined). He’s a senior in the business by now, but still, there are moments which set him on edge.
Younha reminds him that he is human, that he has limits too, and that while it’s good to have high goals, it’s not healthy to expect the impossible from yourself. Younha reminds him that there is a way to make the best of everything that life throws at you. Younha reminds him that as many haters as he has, as many disapproving gazes he gets behind the scenes, there’s still somebody who loves him, completely.
Sometimes, Younha makes Kyuhyun feel undeserving.
“What did I do to deserve you?” he asks her on one of their late-night coffee dates.
She shrugs, half her face buried in a somewhat tacky tartan scarf which Kyuhyun surrendered to her after she found it in his wardrobe, “Exist.”
Kyuhyun wonders how soppy they could possibly get.
“Come on, let’s get home so I can beat your latest high score.”
Maybe not.
Kyuhyun is very bad writing songs. He has a couple of chart-topping OST songs to his name, but Kyuhyun suspects that’s just his fans rabidly buying up any song his name is attached to. So when the company suggests that he write a song for his album, he isn’t sure how to take it. “Sir, to be honest -”
“You can do it Kyuhyun, we have a one-month window for you to finish it too.”
He turns up at Younha’s door that evening, flustered and all its synonyms. “Hi, um, ah, I need … help on something.”
“Help,” she repeats, looking him up and down, “you look like you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“I have to write a song.”
She rolls her eyes and invites him inside. Younha tries to give him advice, only Kyuhyun’s heard it all before from the trainers at the company. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s at a point where textbooks won’t help him anymore though.
“... don’t focus too much on how many syllables there are, don’t be too restrictive, we don’t want to stem any creative flow.”
He nods, only he might be paying too much attention to how good Younha’s hot chocolate tastes. It’s also probably giving him more calories than his manager would recommend, but his stylists are also great at hiding his imperfections, so Kyuhyun isn’t too worried.
Younha seems to catch onto his subliminal messaging, where she decides to embarrass him by teaching him how to play piano instead.
Kyuhyun ends up writing “thank you to the perfect piano girl, Younha, for helping me with writing lyrics for this album.” He actually wanted to write a lot more -- well, he did, only his manager wouldn’t let the rest of the message go into publishing.
Still, Kyuhyun, nagged like a very persuasive five year-old until he got a special copy of his album, complete with the entire message and gave it to Younha (autographed, of course).
She sat next to him on the couch that night and read it out loud to him. Kyuhyun, naturally, blushed a deep red and buried his face in one of the cushions. Younha did the same, but with more dignity. “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah,” Kyuhyun says, still embarrassed but also elated, “I do as well.”
The opening concert of the tour is the absolute worst, considering that it’s his very first. He has performed on a lot of stages thus far, but never his own. The thought of all the fans packed into the stadium, waving lightsicks and banners bearing his name -- the thought of it was enough to have his heart going off at a million miles per hour, let alone actually seeing it. Kyuhyun has always wanted to fill up stadiums, but for it to actually happen is a completely different thing.
“You’re going to be fine,” Younha told him before he set off, “I’m going to be there too, you know?”
But Kyuhyun isn’t convinced. Fine? He is not fine and no amount of BB cream and special effects would cover that up. Hairspray and glitter isn’t enough to stop the countdown from starting and Kyuhyun’s time running out. It is time to step onstage and greet the ocean of bright lights dedicated to him.
Kyuhyun has never felt his voice carry over to an audience of thousands so loudly. “In my debut song, there was a girl who sang with me. That same girl became a radio DJ and helped me write lyrics. Today, she is sitting in the audience, on a seat number I have memorised. I get a lot of messages from my treasured fans who tell me that I am talented, that I am a great singer, a great person. I don’t believe that I am that amazing person I am told I am. But the girl I met five years ago reminds me that even though I am not perfect, I should be happy with what I have.”
In the back of his head, Kyuhyun wonders if his manager will kill him now. “Go Younha, will you marry Cho Kyuhyun, who cannot play piano but can at least serenade you with his voice?”
He looks at the spot where she is -- the spotlight has moved over to that spot (the technical staff are wonderful to him, Kyuhyun can’t help thinking). Only she’s not sitting, she’s left her spot and she’s running up to the stage, loosening up that same tartan scarf. There are no stairs where she ends up, so Kyuhyun walks up there and kneels.
He hears “Yes, you idiot” and he feels like the happiest man on earth.
Lifting Younha up onto the stage and kissing her in front of thousands of people was not part of the plan, but Kyuhyun is now the happiest man on earth, so he couldn’t care less.
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Younha
Genre: slice of life, romance, fluff
Rating: G
A/N: Of June (pt. 4) alternate title is “I’m staring at all these lights and I am going blind.” but 'Five Years and Counting' fits a little better haha~
wordcount: 1648
Their first meeting is understated and punctured with nervousness. It starts with a twenty-year old Cho Kyuhyun and the unfamiliar but (very) pretty girl sitting beside him on a dreary Saturday afternoon in the recording studio. Their producer hasn’t arrived yet, and the tech staff are too busy prepping the equipment to care about the two of them. Besides, they’re singers, the staff are there to turn knobs and type numbers and letters, making sure everything technical runs smoothly. Kyuhyun wonders how today is going to go, it’s the first recording session he’s making -- for his debut single. And who that girl is, he doesn’t know.
It takes another fifteen minutes of aching wait before Kyuhyun finds out that she is Go Younha and will be providing backing vocals for him.
They finish recording Younha’s parts the next day, but Kyuhyun is due for more refinement. He doesn’t expect Younha to be there the next day, smile on her face, carrying words of encouragement and support.
When they finish recording, Kyuhyun asks her if she’d like to have dinner with him. After all, it was only right for him to thank her for appearing on his song.
He quite likes the way she smiles and says yes.
Kyuhyun rises through the ranks of the music industry hierarchy quickly, one of those singers who could actually sing, who didn’t need the thousands of dollars poured into a flashy music video and a skin-baring photoshoot. Cho Kyuhyun with the voice listeners could not forget, Cho Kyuhyun, the nation’s most eligible bachelor. He is very successful at twenty-three, the nation’s favourite young man.
Younha’s career though, does not take off. She is just as talented as him, if not more, with an ear perfectly attuned to the ivory keys of the piano, and a voice he would listen to for hours on end and never be tired of. However, Younha is not tall, she is not curvy, she is not the glamorous young woman the nation likes to see on the pages of a magazine, so she does not become the nation’s sweetheart, far from it. Younha stays another one of the people on the street you walk past without sparing a glance. She gets some awards, she sees #1 sometimes, but a year later, when Kyuhyun texts Younha “Happy Birthday” in the car, he only hears her on radio.
Younha has graduated from singer to DJ.
Kyuhyun nags at his manager until he lands a spot on her radio show, and on air, he loses most of his logical thinking capacity and by the time they’re off air, Kyuhyun suspects that his manager is going to flame him for flirting with Younha (but he isn’t sure about if he really did either). As they’re pulling their headphones off, Younha looks at him, amused. “Piano girl? Seriously?”
He smiles a little guiltily (but only a little) and nods, “Yeah. The perfect piano girl.”
She gives him the smile he could never decipher and ushers in the staff member who is armed with a camera. There are peace signs and smiles and funny faces and then Kyuhyun disappears, wishing he had said something more.
He misses her one hundred day anniversary as a radio DJ, but he settles for bringing her flowers the next day. “Happy one-hundred and one-th anniversary?”
Younha raises an eyebrow, “You’re just trying to make up for missing the one hundred day mark.”
“No,” Kyuhyun says, “It’s just that I love you.”
She smiles wider than he has ever seen, ever and she tells him rather sheepishly, “I love you too.”
Just like that.
Kyuhyun gets tired of his life sometimes. The fans are overbearing sometimes, what with them and their “oppa, saranghae”s every time he is recognised in open air. There are shipper fans too, and whenever they gush over him and that co-actress in that low-key drama, Kyuhyun gets a mysterious pain in his head (although that might be imagined). He’s a senior in the business by now, but still, there are moments which set him on edge.
Younha reminds him that he is human, that he has limits too, and that while it’s good to have high goals, it’s not healthy to expect the impossible from yourself. Younha reminds him that there is a way to make the best of everything that life throws at you. Younha reminds him that as many haters as he has, as many disapproving gazes he gets behind the scenes, there’s still somebody who loves him, completely.
Sometimes, Younha makes Kyuhyun feel undeserving.
“What did I do to deserve you?” he asks her on one of their late-night coffee dates.
She shrugs, half her face buried in a somewhat tacky tartan scarf which Kyuhyun surrendered to her after she found it in his wardrobe, “Exist.”
Kyuhyun wonders how soppy they could possibly get.
“Come on, let’s get home so I can beat your latest high score.”
Maybe not.
Kyuhyun is very bad writing songs. He has a couple of chart-topping OST songs to his name, but Kyuhyun suspects that’s just his fans rabidly buying up any song his name is attached to. So when the company suggests that he write a song for his album, he isn’t sure how to take it. “Sir, to be honest -”
“You can do it Kyuhyun, we have a one-month window for you to finish it too.”
He turns up at Younha’s door that evening, flustered and all its synonyms. “Hi, um, ah, I need … help on something.”
“Help,” she repeats, looking him up and down, “you look like you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“I have to write a song.”
She rolls her eyes and invites him inside. Younha tries to give him advice, only Kyuhyun’s heard it all before from the trainers at the company. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s at a point where textbooks won’t help him anymore though.
“... don’t focus too much on how many syllables there are, don’t be too restrictive, we don’t want to stem any creative flow.”
He nods, only he might be paying too much attention to how good Younha’s hot chocolate tastes. It’s also probably giving him more calories than his manager would recommend, but his stylists are also great at hiding his imperfections, so Kyuhyun isn’t too worried.
Younha seems to catch onto his subliminal messaging, where she decides to embarrass him by teaching him how to play piano instead.
Kyuhyun ends up writing “thank you to the perfect piano girl, Younha, for helping me with writing lyrics for this album.” He actually wanted to write a lot more -- well, he did, only his manager wouldn’t let the rest of the message go into publishing.
Still, Kyuhyun, nagged like a very persuasive five year-old until he got a special copy of his album, complete with the entire message and gave it to Younha (autographed, of course).
She sat next to him on the couch that night and read it out loud to him. Kyuhyun, naturally, blushed a deep red and buried his face in one of the cushions. Younha did the same, but with more dignity. “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah,” Kyuhyun says, still embarrassed but also elated, “I do as well.”
The opening concert of the tour is the absolute worst, considering that it’s his very first. He has performed on a lot of stages thus far, but never his own. The thought of all the fans packed into the stadium, waving lightsicks and banners bearing his name -- the thought of it was enough to have his heart going off at a million miles per hour, let alone actually seeing it. Kyuhyun has always wanted to fill up stadiums, but for it to actually happen is a completely different thing.
“You’re going to be fine,” Younha told him before he set off, “I’m going to be there too, you know?”
But Kyuhyun isn’t convinced. Fine? He is not fine and no amount of BB cream and special effects would cover that up. Hairspray and glitter isn’t enough to stop the countdown from starting and Kyuhyun’s time running out. It is time to step onstage and greet the ocean of bright lights dedicated to him.
Kyuhyun has never felt his voice carry over to an audience of thousands so loudly. “In my debut song, there was a girl who sang with me. That same girl became a radio DJ and helped me write lyrics. Today, she is sitting in the audience, on a seat number I have memorised. I get a lot of messages from my treasured fans who tell me that I am talented, that I am a great singer, a great person. I don’t believe that I am that amazing person I am told I am. But the girl I met five years ago reminds me that even though I am not perfect, I should be happy with what I have.”
In the back of his head, Kyuhyun wonders if his manager will kill him now. “Go Younha, will you marry Cho Kyuhyun, who cannot play piano but can at least serenade you with his voice?”
He looks at the spot where she is -- the spotlight has moved over to that spot (the technical staff are wonderful to him, Kyuhyun can’t help thinking). Only she’s not sitting, she’s left her spot and she’s running up to the stage, loosening up that same tartan scarf. There are no stairs where she ends up, so Kyuhyun walks up there and kneels.
He hears “Yes, you idiot” and he feels like the happiest man on earth.
Lifting Younha up onto the stage and kissing her in front of thousands of people was not part of the plan, but Kyuhyun is now the happiest man on earth, so he couldn’t care less.