[ys] Write Me A Tragedy (2/7)
A/N: Honestly, I have no clue where this story came from or where its going - I'm just writing as fast as I can. That being said, its so good hearing from everyone your thoughts and feelings about this story! Feel free to leave me a comment/tweet me; you have no idea how much it means :)
Oh just one random detail for you: in this universe, Yong-hwa is from a pop-punk!version of CNBlue (think Panic! at the Disco/Fall Out Boy). Hence, the swearing and the general potty-mouthedness. Just my own little daydream.
+++
Joo-hyun’s sigh is long-suffering, even across the phone line. “No, of course I didn’t ask them to serve you the papers right after you got offstage. I mean, how could I have known what time they would have gone down?”
Yong-hwa bites down the instinctive wave of anger, even though he remembers vividly, the twin pangs of humiliation and bewilderment he’d felt, taking their divorce papers, listening to a total stranger tell him that his own wife had filed for divorce from him.
He swallows, forces his voice down a notch. “Why?”
Joo-hyun’s answer is another sigh, and Yong-hwa’s fingers tighten around his phone.
“Look, Yong-hwa,” She says softly. “Look at us. We lead totally different lives now. You’re a rising rockstar, a celebrity. I’m just a paralegal, a regular person, who happens to work insane hours. It doesn’t help that you do too.” He hears her swallow over the phone. “Honestly, it’s just not working out.”
He wants to say something in response, wants to rebut her stupid argument, but the fact that he can’t find the words, the fact that everything she’s said so far is true speaks for him in his silence.
“We haven’t been leading the same lives since you signed on to FNC,” Joo-hyun continues. “I don’t begrudge you this life, any of it, because this is your dream and I want for you what makes you happy. I’m just saying that,” Her voice hitches. “I’m just saying that this is where I get off. This is where I can’t go where you do.”
Yong-hwa shuts his eyes desperately.
“Look,” She says, and already she sounds a lot more like the Seo Joo-hyun he knows, capable and in control. “This is good for you. You’ll be single again, on the market. You could even date another celebrity, get the kind of press and connections that FNC dreamed for you a long time ago when you signed on. You won’t be saddled with me anymore.”
He breathes out, because she’s conjuring up exactly the kind of monsters that have lurked about in his head for the past year, the siren-voices that had chanted what if, what if when he thinks about what his life might have been if he hadn’t married Seo Joo-hyun.
“Sleep on it,” Joo-hyun says finally. “Sleep on it, and let me know what you think.”
+++
He doesn’t sleep.
This is ridiculous, one side of him argues, Of course you love Joo-hyun. Maybe it’s true that the both of you haven’t been spending as much time together lately, but you love her. You married her. You can’t let her go through with this divorce.
But there’s another voice inside his head, insistent. But she’s right. The both of you haven’t really spent any proper time together. Not since you started work on the second album. This is your life now, Yong-hwa. What if there’s just no place for her in it?
His face is as black as the coffee he’s drinking the next morning, which must be why everyone stays the hell out of his way. But he conscientiously avoids his manager, Sang-woo at breakfast, at morning dry run.
He knows what the label would tell him to do. But he doesn’t want them in his head, until he figures out what all this is about.
Jong-hyun is the only one who dares to approach him; years of friendship will give him that privilege after all, and he kicks Yong-hwa’s chair after soundcheck, startling him out of the thoughts he’s been lost in. “Hey,” Jong-hyun says, and while his tone is careless, his best friend’s eyes are knowing. “Let’s go get some food.”
Instead of eating in with the crew, they drive out, grabbing fast food to go, and it just all spills out of Yong-hwa over the smell of grease and ketchup. Jong-hyun is quiet, listening and nibbling on a fry until Yong-hwa has run out of words.
“I don’t know what to do,” Yong-hwa confesses. “I mean, it’s not like we’re fighting or that we hate each other - but it’s never been this bad between us. We’ve just… grown apart and I can’t help but wonder if she is right and that our paths have diverged.”
He looks at his best friend of 12 years, who has seen him and Joo-hyun date and get married. Jong-hyun will know what to do, he thinks with some impending relief.
But Jong-hyun’s question hits him between the eyes with all the unexpected force of its simplicity. “Do you want a divorce?”
The instinctive no is on Yong-hwa’s tongue, but he isn’t sure if that’s because he’s just being stubborn. If he’s just being a romantic. If he just wants to hold onto something he’s always known… just because he doesn’t want to lose it.
“I don’t know,” He admits, softly, shamefully, but it feels like a more truthful answer than his first one.
Jong-hyun’s eyebrows lift in obvious surprise - he didn’t expect this answer, Yong-hwa thinks. But he doesn’t judge, doesn’t say anything; just shrugs in that maddeningly familiar way. “Then that’s what you have to figure out.”
+++
He still can’t sleep after the concert that night. Honestly, it’s a miracle that he survived this entire day; he was just so lost in his own damn head, thinking about if he wants to get a divorce from his wife.
To be separated from Joo-hyun. To go their own ways. To never wake up beside her again, to never know about how her day is, to never speak to her, to never live with her, to never be with her.
Yong-hwa flips the sheets over, sitting up in an exasperated huff.
He’s going crazy, he swears he is.
He checks his phone, and aside from the usual deluge of notifications from his social media accounts that he swipes away, there is nothing. Not even a text from Joo-hyun.
He flops back down for a minute, dropping the phone. It is almost 11 but he’s never going to get any rest like this. Good thing they don’t have an early morning schedule tomorrow, which means he’s still got some time to recuperate in the morning, but the thought of spending at least another 12 sleepless hours in this hotel room is more than Yong-hwa can bear.
Unless…
Maybe he just needs to know what’s going on in her head. Why she would do such a thing.
He sits up again, picks up his phone and speed dials Hong-ki.
“Hey,” He says casually, hopping out of bed, already hunting for clothes to pull on. “How do you feel about a late night drive back to Seoul?”
+++
He asks Hong-ki to drive them to the Barun law offices in Seoul, because even though it’s close to 2am, he has a sneaking suspicion that Seo Joo-hyun is still in the office, and not at home, like any normal person would be.
He briefly worries about not being able to get into the offices, but he is rewarded by a stroke of luck when a yawning associate comes out of the toilet just as he reaches the door, tapping his badge to open the doors. He doesn’t seem to notice Yong-hwa scurrying in behind him, and Yong-hwa soon loses him among the banks of cubicles.
The lay of the office is confusing, since this is actually Yong-hwa’s first time there and he has no idea where Joo-hyun sits, even though she’s been working here for at least 2 years now. He follows the signs to the litigation department (that much he knows at least), and when he rounds the corner, he has another stroke of luck. There is a main meeting room, which is fully lit and inside, three figures are seated, flipping through stacks of paper folders, laptops open in front of them.
Yong-hwa spots Joo-hyun right away, sitting at the side, her eyes flitting from side to side as she compares two folders placed beside one another.
She looks exhausted, he thinks, not for the first time in weeks.
The other male and female inside appear to talk among themselves, standing up a second later. Joo-hyun lifts her head from the documents, looking at them, but she simply smiles and shakes her head. They must be heading out to grab a snack, Yong-hwa thinks, ducking quickly into an empty cubicle so they won’t see him.
With her colleagues gone, Joo-hyun seems to give up on her own documents briefly. She stands up, rolls her shoulders and her head in an obvious attempt to relieve some of the stress that must have accumulated. But less than a minute later, she sits down, pulls the papers back in front of her. Her shoulders deflate in what is unmistakably a sigh.
Maybe it is the lighting of the conference room, but he swears he sees hollows in her face that weren’t there before. She just looks pale and wan, like a breath of wind could knock her over, and not for the first time that night, Yong-hwa wonders why. Wonders why she is working herself to death, especially when she doesn’t need to, what is going on his wife’s head.
He wonders when he stopped knowing his own wife.
Acting on a whim, he takes out his phone, sends her a text. Hey.
Joo-hyun keeps flipping papers, seemingly not noticing her phone go off. But a few minutes later, he is rewarded when she glances over to the side, picking up her phone. She bites her lip, hesitating before her fingers fly over the screen. Hi, her message reads. Can’t sleep?
Not really, he types back. How about you?
She glances around the room, as if expecting him to materialize, but her reply makes him shake his head. Just going to bed. It’s been a long day.
How much has she not been telling me? How much has she been shouldering on her own?
He is still thinking about what to reply to that, without giving away that he knows it’s a lie, when her next text arrives. Have you thought about it?
There can only be one thing ‘it’ refers to, and now it is Yong-hwa’s turn to hesitate before he writes, more on impulse than anything else,
Why do you want a divorce?
This time, it seems as though Joo-hyun stares at her phone for the longest time, and he sees it; the shapes of a million thoughts fleeting across her face, but he can’t decipher any of them. But her message betrays none of this: I told you. We just lead too different lives now. This is better for us.
Yong-hwa breathes in, out, and his fingers act faster than his head, pressing send.
He can see the surprise ripple across her face, and he watches as she drops her phone onto the papers.
Better for us, or better for me?
Inside the room, Joo-hyun wipes at her eyes, tears shiny under the harsh lights of the conference room. She looks away, her eyelids sparkling with moisture, and her chest hitches as she buries her face in her hands.
A part of Yong-hwa wants to get up, go inside that room and hug her, squeeze the living daylights out of her until she forgets all these stupid thoughts of divorcing him, until she looks more like herself, healthy and happy. But he makes himself get up, leave the office.
It’s only when he’s on the car on the way back to Gyeong-ju that he lets himself wonder if he’s let down the only person who’s never failed him.
+++
There is a red carpet event the next day in Ul-san for an upcoming melodrama, and Hong-ki drives him down for the premiere, since Yong-hwa had sung the main theme song for the movie.
Ever since he became a celebrity, these appearances have become more and more frequent. Sometimes, Joo-hyun accompanies him to these events, as much as her own schedule will allow it. But generally, these appearances are at music shows and awards, so he tends to show up for those with the band. There are occasions like tonight, where he’s forced to fly solo, which can be a little more intimidating and lonely. There’s no one to exchange snarky comments with in the audience during taping breaks, no one to stand with as they sip from cocktails pre and post event. And with his head in such a mess, Yong-hwa only knows he’s going to be terrible company, which is why he decides to cut out as early as he can.
He steps onto the red carpet, waving at the fans - he spots one or two of them waving CNBlue signs which is sweet, and he reaches past the barriers to sign those posters. There are fans who want to take selfies with him, and it’s a garbled mix of lights and voices washing over him. Through it all, Yong-hwa just smiles, slips into the skin of charming frontman, letting the sounds and sensations roll off him.
He poses for the wall of reporters and photographers, ignoring the questions that are hurled at him from the crowd.
“Yong-hwa, Yong-hwa! Over here!”
“How do you feel about Billboard’s calling Intuition the pop-punk anthem of the century?”
“Are you thinking of branching out? Leaving the band and starting solo?”
He’s thankful that the questions are mostly about himself or the band professionally. Which means that nothing has leaked about his divorce papers, which is a miracle in and of itself. There were crew members standing nearby when he got served, and the law company who filed the application must know for sure, but no one has said anything to the press. Yong-hwa puts this down to his PR manager and Joo-hyun.
He’s about to move on down the carpet, when there is a shrill voice that stops him in his steps.
“Tiffany!”
The cameras and heads swivel, as does Yong-hwa’s.
He’s met Tiffany at several music award shows before. Recently crowned the “princess of pop”, she had experienced that same meteoric rise that CNBlue had, releasing a series of catchy dance tracks in quick succession that had won her awards and a dedicated fanbase. He and Joo-hyun had actually met her recently at the Korean Music Awards, where she’d introduced them to her boyfriend, a well-known music producer called DJ Jang.
Yong-hwa tries to catch her eye, give her a wave, when that same shrill voice chimes in, cutting over the melee.
“Tiffany! How do you feel about those pictures of DJ Jang in Bali?”
Yong-hwa pauses.
He doesn’t keep up with celebrity gossip, not even with his own band - there are always new rumours about Jung-shin dating some girl group member, or Jong-hyun in talks to sign on with another entertainment company; all blatantly untrue. But he had heard these: ugly rumours that DJ Jang had been snapped in Bali, canoodling with a girl who was obviously not Tiffany.
To her credit, Tiffany thrusts her chin up proudly, holding her smile, as all of them are taught to do. She ignores the question, but this one question has only unleashed the floodgates for more.
“How do you feel about it?”
“Are you guys broken up?”
“Do you know who she is?”
“What would you say to him, in the light of these photos?”
It is one of those blink-and-you-might-miss-it moments, but Yong-hwa sees it clear as day: Tiffany’s smile wobbles, slips.
He looks down the carpet at Sang-woo, who is hovering, waiting for Yong-hwa. But Sang-woo, who always has one eye on everything around him, has also noticed the explosion of ugliness taking next to Yong-hwa. Having the uncanny ability to predict Yong-hwa’s every move, he watches his manager’s eyes widen in warning. If his manager could telepathically telegraph instructions into his head, he’d bet Sang-woo would be screaming something like this - DO NOT GO NEAR THAT GIRL, SHE IS TROUBLE FOR YOUR IMAGE, ABORT, ABORT -
Lucky he isn’t a telepath then, Yong-hwa thinks, stepping towards Tiffany with a cheerfulness he hasn’t felt all week. “Hey,” He says, touching her elbow lightly, and he swears that the cameras go off with renewed force.
Tiffany looks up at him, and the smile on her face is pleasant, if not a mite pained. “Yong-hwa,” She says and her voice is almost lost in the volley of questions pelted their way. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
He jerks his chin down the carpet. “I think we’re done here.” He says politely, quietly. “Shall we head in together?”
Tiffany nods, mutely, her public smile fading by the second.
He raises a hand, a gesture that is meant to thank and not-so-politely dismiss the reporters, and when he turns, he ensures that Tiffany is on his right side - sandwiched between him and the backdrop, so that all the photos capture his side profile and not hers.
Sang-woo is shooting him death glares from down the carpet, and he knows that the more scandalous outlets will release articles speculating about their relationship and predicting the dissolution of Yong-hwa’s marriage (oh, how preciously close they are to the truth, Yong-hwa thinks wryly). But all he can think about is Joo-hyun. About something she’d said to him one night, as they were both lying in bed, after he’d signed his contract with FNC.
What do you want from me, now that I’m going to be famous? He’d meant it as a joke, still high from the events of the day. But Joo-hyun had been quiet, serious, reaching up to push back his hair from his forehead and Yong-hwa nestled closer to her, listening.
Promise me that you’ll always be kind, she’d told him, her eyes unbearably earnest. Wherever you are and whoever you are.
I promise, he’d echoed.
Inside, Tiffany is rooting around in her clutch for what seems to be a tissue, and she dabs at her eyelashes that are damp with tears. Her make-up artist hovers anxiously, waiting to swoop in and undo the damage. “I’m sorry, oppa,” She tells him weakly, “I should know better than to let them get a rise out of me. Thank God you were there.”
“No worries,” He says, and the words roll off his lips easily, unconsciously. “Just doing what my wife always told me to do.”
Not sure how much longer I’ll get to say that.
He doesn’t mean to, but Tiffany’s eyes shimmer with more tears and the make-up artist looks progressively alarmed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
Tiffany waves away the make-up artist impatiently, still touching her eyes with the tissue. “No, it’s not that.” She says, touching his arm. “It’s just so wonderful how much you love your wife. I’m jealous. I can only hope to find someone who loves me half as much someday.”
She sighs, shakes her head, seemingly unaware of the effect her words have had on Yong-hwa. “I better go get my make-up fixed before the movie starts,” She tells him with a wave. “I’ll see you inside!”
Later that night, Yong-hwa screws up his courage, calling Joo-hyun.
It goes to voicemail, but that’s okay.
“Hyun,” He says slowly. “I thought about it.”
“I thought: maybe she’s right. Our paths are so different. Maybe this is it - maybe this is the end of us. I thought about getting a divorce from you… and for a moment, I wasn’t sure of the answer.”
It’s honest, maybe too honest - but if they’re going to start again, she needs to know everything.
“But I’m not giving up.” He says, letting the words that have been rolling around in his heart and head all day take shape. “I’m staying, and I’m fighting you on this divorce, because I know who you are, Joo-hyun. I know that underneath our crazy schedules, our fucking crazy lives, you’re still that same girl I married. And I’m sure as hell not going to let a little thing like circumstances divide us. I refuse to.”
He pauses, breathes in and out. Already, he feels more at peace, like his body recognizes that this is the right decision.
“I love you,” He says, “And nothing’s going to change that.”