[ys] Write Me A Tragedy (7/7)
A/N: I'm grateful to everyone, who has walked faithfully with this story, waiting patiently on me, refreshing this page to see if I'd updated (I probably hadn't). I hope that this last chapter resonates with you, and is what you hoped it would be.
If I could ask one favour of you, it would be this: please listen to this amazing cover of "Million Reasons" as you read this chapter. I've wanted for months to write a fic that involved this song, and it's finally happened, which brings me so much joy.
+++
He doesn’t go home.
How can he? When he essentially told his wife that he married her years ago not because he wanted to, but out of a sense of beholdeness, as the only way for him to repay her for everything she had given up?
Even thinking it makes him wince, much less the fact that he shouted it in her face. Yong-hwa doesn’t think he can ever forget her expression - those split seconds of blind shock, pain fracturing across her face as everything she believed in and about him came crumbling down.
He presses a wrist against his eyes. Not that it does anything to block out the memory of it.
There is a creak, the sound of a door opening, and Yong-hwa presses his wrist more firmly against his eyes. The room is dark; it’s been that way for a while now, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s day or night. All he knows is that the bright light spilling in from outside is hurting his eyes. He turns on his side, facing away from the door.
Jong-hyun had been the one to offer him the spare room in his apartment, a place to tide him over in the aftermath of his argument with Joo-hyun. It was Jong-hyun, who had let him brood; only opening the door periodically to bring him water or energy bars (the only thing Jong-hyun keeps in sure stock around his house apparently). He’d heard Jong-hyun talking faintly on the phone through the closed door, making excuses for him to someone on the line, Sang-woo most likely.
But surely, even his best friend has to run out of patience sometime.
Yet, when Jong-hyun speaks, he sounds surprisingly normal, given the circumstances. “They’re coming over, so you might want to consider getting your ass out of bed.”
Yong-hwa doesn’t even have time to roll over, to ask who the “they” is. All Jong-hyun leaves behind is an open door, light flooding the room, persistent and irritating.
Sitting up properly in bed is hard, after two to three days of lying down in every conceivable position. He rolls his shoulders, hears a distinct but not unsatisfying pop, before he even musters up the energy to swing his legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cool beneath the soles of his bare feet, and he forces himself up before he can overthink it.
Before leaving the room, he pauses, doubles back for his phone that’s lying uselessly on the bedside table. The screen brightens as he unlocks it, and he swipes up, finger hovering over the airplane mode it’s currently on.
He exhales as he clicks it off, watching as his notifications start to fill the screen, a surprising deluge of them. He catches a few names - Jung-shin, Min-hyuk, Sang-woo, before they whizz by and when he’s certain the avalanche of notifications have settled, he swipes down, looking for the only name he wants to see, but it isn’t there.
At this point, he shouldn’t be surprised - why would Joo-hyun want to text him, after what he said to her? Still, the pang of disappointment hits him with the same force of a punch to the face, a sour taste at the back of his throat. What would she say anyway? Just sign the damn papers. Do you get it now? Do you see? Haven't you ruined my life enough already? The thought of it alone is enough to make him sick; aftershocks of the memory of their confrontation rolling anew over his skin.
He is about to switch his phone back into airplane mode, when his eye catches on another notification - 3 missed calls from Si-won. A text, whose preview reads: Yong-hwa, I tried calling but your phone but -
He hesitates for a moment over that one. Si-won has to be calling about the divorce papers, to get him to file an answer like what he mentioned the last time. Only… is there a point? Things between him and Joo-hyun have already come to such a state. Maybe a few days ago, he would still have had some fight in him, a growing confidence that he would have been able to change Joo-hyun’s mind. Now, it just feels impossible even to think of trying.
He turns off his phone for good measure, tossing it back carelessly on the bed as he slips down the hallway that leads to the main living room. He runs his tongue uselessly around cracking lips, wondering if he has time to pop into the kitchen for a drink of water. He probably looks like hell.
But seated in the living room, around Jong-hyun’s low coffee table, are Jung-shin and Min-hyuk, who seem to startle to life at the sight of him. Jung-shin’s eyes widen, but there is no forthcoming joke about his appearance, no wisecrack. That’s how Yong-hwa knows that he’s well and truly fucked - that he must look bad enough to not even warrant a joke from Jung-shin, whose usual greeting is a jibe or insult of some sort.
He pads into the living room, feeling all eyes on him, careful, as if he’s made of glass. The boys are all sitting cross-legged on the floor, and as he settles in, he notices the supplies laid out across the coffee table. The empty large pot. A package of frozen rice cakes. A box of red pepper paste. A familiar, battered portable cooker.
Apparently that’s not all. Jong-hyun reaches behind him, heaving a bulging, clinking bag that lands on the table with a loud thump. Green glass bottles of soju, interspersed with the tall necks of beer bottles, peek out from between the handles of the plastic bag.
“Get some glasses.” Jong-hyun says grimly. He locks eyes with Yong-hwa across the table. “You’re making the rice cakes.”
It isn’t so much a command as it is a statement; it’s an open secret that Yong-hwa makes the best rice cakes among them all. Jong-hyun adds too little sugar, Jung-shin burns the rice cakes and Min-hyuk’s is essentially soup. But eyeing the spread on the table before him, it all feels like too much - too much unnecessary effort and action. The thought of the empty, quiet guest room, a cold bed where he can be alone with his thoughts, flickers temptingly in his mind. A place that is distinctly not here, where he and his mistakes aren’t laid bare in the glare of the white fluorescent lights, like an insect spread out across a slide under the microscope.
But there is a fierce gleam in Jong-hyun’s eyes that makes him think that he might not get away with it this time, and fighting it just feels like it requires energy that he doesn’t have. He reaches for the cold package of rice cakes mutely, while Min-hyuk hastily tries to set up the portable cooker. Jung-shin pushes himself up from the floor, fetching the glasses from the kitchen, and for a while, Yong-hwa just forces himself to focus on the dull clatter of cupboard doors being opened and shut. One thing at a time, he tells himself.
Making the rice cakes is surprisingly calming. He’s made it so many times that the steps come to him instinctively and he finds that if he focuses on each step at a time, he is able to block out everything else. Soak the rice cakes in hot water. Make the sauce - one tablespoon of gochujang. Two tablespoons of soy sauce. Sugar to season. Garlic. Stir. Keep the heat low, until bubbles start appearing around the edges.
Even though most of his attention is focused on the small, simple tasks at hand, bits of sound filter in - the pop of a beer bottle, the snap of a soju bottle cap, the satisfying gurgle of cold alcohol being poured into fresh glasses. But there is no conversation. This is likely the quietest all of them have been around each other, but Yong-hwa hears it, clear as day, what is not being said - the worry, the tension, the waiting, like a guitar string pulled taut.
When he flicks off the cooker, Min-hyuk is there, pouring the rice cakes into a wide, flat plate in the middle of the table. Four beer glasses stand at the ready, shot glasses next to them, filled to the brim, and for a moment, Yong-hwa just stares at them, colors and shapes blurring in his eyes.
He manages to lift his eyes to Jong-hyun, sitting opposite him, and now, there is none of the usual calm he is used to in his best friend’s expression - just an overwhelming sense of urgency mingled with worry.
“You have to say it,” Jong-hyun says, surprisingly gentle for all his earlier bite, and that is all it takes for an instinctive lump to jump to Yong-hwa’s throat, as if waiting in the shadows for those very words. He makes the stupid mistake of looking around, at Min-hyuk, at Jung-shin, and the bottom of his eyelids burn.
He swallows. Hidden under the coffee table, his hands fist in his lap. Rip it off, he thinks dimly. These are the guys he would trust with his life, his heart. He owes them this much, nothing less, but why are the words so hard to force out?
“Joo-hyun is divorcing me.”
The tears, embarrassingly, come first; hot streaks down his cheeks, and Yong-hwa draws in a huge, ragged breath that doesn’t seem to fill his lungs in the slightest. He presses his arm across his face, and he can feel his shoulders shaking with sobs that are fighting to escape, to be let loose after days of holding it in, after hours of tossing and turning, stubbornly dry-eyed in the dark.
Then, there is an arm that curls itself around his shoulder, the edge of a shoulder bumping against his forearm, the sense of someone drawing him close. Against his own will, a sob builds, tears itself from his throat, and he squeezes his eyelids shut. My wife is divorcing me and I pushed her to it.
I could have fixed it. I was so close to changing her mind - to getting her to stay with me and then I went and fucked it up.
Min-hyuk’s voice is clear, fierce in his ear. “Hyung.”
He feels fingers tighten on his bare calf, and then he really does lose it; huge racking sobs that rip right through him, and he clings, like a fucking baby to the arm around him.
I’ve fucked everything up, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
+++
The boys stay over that night.
He can’t even remember how long it takes him to pull himself together; he must have cried for the better part of an hour at least, but the boys are there with him, holding on; a life-preserver in the sea he’s lost in. They are not a touchy-feely bunch by any means, but that night, Yong-hwa feels it more strongly than ever; the strength of their brotherhood, the fierce belief they somehow still have in him, even though he feels as though his failings are exposed for all the world to see.
And when he’s calmed down enough, they drink, and the whole story spills out of him between the beer and soju. He suspects that Jong-hyun must have stocked up in the hopes to make him talk, but it is as if the tears have already loosened him up enough to do the job. The boys listen in silence; sipping alcohol and picking at the cooling rice cakes.
Jong-hyun wisely refrains from saying much, leaving the talking to the maknaes, who have had little to no inkling of what was happening. If there is a silver lining in all this, it is that Jung-shin and Min-hyuk don’t hold it against him for not telling them; all he senses from them is genuine sympathy and a desire to understand - both of which he is grateful for.
“Sounds like it came as a shock to you too,” Jung-shin offers, surprisingly astute in his response towards their fight.
“It was,” Yong-hwa admits. “I mean, I love Joo-hyun,” He says quietly. “Marrying her was the obvious thing to do… but I didn’t realize that I was also doing it out of some kind of guilt.” He pauses, somberly. “As if marrying her was a way to repay her for what she’d given up for me.”
Min-hyuk shakes his head, and Yong-hwa feels a flare of affection for him; their most earnest, sincere member, stubborn to a fault in his optimism of people. It is that same fierce gleam he sees in Min-hyuk now. “Hyungsoo-nim is smart. Maybe what the both of you said to each other is true, to a certain extent. But anyone who’s seen the pair of you over time knows that you love each other. Deeply.” He hesitates, evidently searching for the right words. “Even though what you two said to each other was unexpected and painful… trust that she knows that what you said is just a fraction of the truth. That you married her for more than just a reason to assuage your guilt.”
There is a familiar echo in Min-hyuk’s words; Yong-hwa’s mind conjures up Deok-hyun's voice. Trust in her. Trust her to see you. Trust. It all seems to boil down to that - a beautiful, impossible, invisible thing that is all but hard to grasp within your fingers. Trust.
He doesn’t even care that he’s crying again; a single tear slipping down his cheek, but across the table, Jong-hyun is holding up his soju cup, a grim smile on his face. “I’ll drink to that. I’ll drink to you and Joo-hyun.”
Jung-shin raises his cup in affirmation, and Min-hyuk follows suit. The clink of glass against glass, simple and wordless, means more to him than a thousand consolations ever could.
The maknaes head home somewhere in the late morning the next day; Jung-shin finally unable to resist making a crack at him any longer (“Get cleaned up, hyung, is that a little bit of mould under your - oh, nope, just stubble”), which is how he knows that everything is going back to normal. And when he stands under the cool spray of the shower, it finally feels as though he is slowly putting both hands back on the steering wheel of his life. Taking back control of the mess that his life has spiralled into.
Still, he naps off the rest of the alcohol in the afternoon, and is fooling around on a spare acoustic guitar that Jong-hyun has, when a knock on the door startles him.
Jong-hyun is there; surprisingly well-dressed as compared to his usual uniform of a worn cotton shirt and torn jeans. His best friend’s lips quirk in a small smile. “Hey. Feeling better?”
“A little more civilised at least,” Yong-hwa says wryly, tugging at the loose shirt Jong-hyun has loaned him. He gives Jong-hyun an obvious once-over. “I hope you didn’t get dressed up on my account.”
Jong-hyun has the grace to look somewhat embarrassed, his cheeks pinking. “I’m, ah… going out.” His voice drops slightly. “I’m going on that blind date… with Joo-hyun’s friend. Sorry. I would have cancelled… given everything that's going on. But I didn’t think it was nice to let her down.”
Even though she is not the subject of the conversation, just the sound of her name brings a pang to his heart. But he makes himself shrug it off. If there is anyone who deserves a bit of happiness, it’s Jong-hyun. Plus, just because he’s moping around at home, doesn’t mean his best friend has to suffer along with him. “Tae-yeon, right?”
Jong-hyun nods, adjusting the cuffs of his long-sleeved button down shirt. “Yeah,” He says, and even if he isn’t saying much, Yong-hwa can feel the nerves rolling off his best friend. “Do I look okay?”
In spite of himself, Yong-hwa can’t help the smile that cracks across his face. It is such a normal, ordinary question, and it actually feels nice, focusing on a problem that isn’t his own. “You look good.” He says reassuringly. “I promise, she’ll be impressed.”
Jong-hyun looks relieved, tugging at one last crease in his shirt. “Thanks. I hope it goes well.” He pauses. “I don’t have much at home, but you’re welcome to order in dinner for yourself.”
“Yeah,” Yong-hwa parries back without thinking. “If I get a hankering for energy bars, I know just where to look.”
Jong-hyun rolls his eyes, shoots him the middle finger, but there is something relieved in the way he looks at Yong-hwa. He pushes himself off the doorframe, as if getting ready to leave, but he pauses at the last moment.
His voice is softer now, more earnest. “Hey. It’ll be okay. Joo-hyun is a smart girl. She loves you, and she won’t hold words said in anger against you.” He smiles crookedly. “You just need to remind her. Give her a reason to stay.”
Something about Jong-hyun’s words snag on his attention, set his senses tingling, but all the same he nods absently, shooting Jong-hyun a grateful parting smile, watching as his best friend disappears, the dull slam of the front door marking his exit.
A reason to stay.
He picks up the guitar again, strumming, his fingers finding the chords he’s been working on for the past few weeks. But this time, they are not as empty as they used to feel in his head. He changes chords, and the first sentence bubbles up out of nowhere, in his head - you’ve given me a million reasons to let you go.
Oh.
He slowly leans over, reaching for his phone on the night stand, guitar still balanced over his lap. He clicks through the menu, until he opens up a new voice memo. The red recording button blinks, and he settles back into the bed, fingers suddenly clammy against the neck of the guitar.
“Okay,” He says, finding his voice, talking aloud against the silence of the room. “Million Reasons. Version 1.”
That is how Jong-hyun finds him four hours later, strumming feverishly away, singing at a volume without regard for who might hear him. He almost doesn’t even register that Jong-hyun is there for the first minute or so; his eyes are closed, even as he tries to puzzle out the words, tries to pare them down till they fit right.
But when his eyelids fly open, Jong-hyun’s hand is braced against the doorframe, head cocked in an approximation of curiousity.
Yong-hwa clicks off the recording - this is version 4 now, but he thinks this very well might be it; the final permutation of lyrics that he decides to go with. He doesn’t even need Jong-hyun to tell him; he feels it, the first real grin overtaking his face since the fight - large, relieved, triumphant. “Do you want to hear it?”
+++
On hindsight, the completion of the song is in its own way timely, with the final Seoul concert looming large on the horizon. Sang-woo is also only willing to buy the sick excuse for so long, which is why Yong-hwa soon finds himself caught up in a flurry of preparations for the last concert, complete with other activities like public appearances and interviews to drum up the hype before. This Seoul concert was actually relatively unplanned for; an additional night added to the tour line-up after the overwhelming response to their first show in the city. Yet, it is also quickly shaping up to be one of their bigger performances on this tour; Sang-woo explains that this show will act as a final hurrah for the tour’s conclusion.
Maybe under different circumstances, Yong-hwa would have felt more keenly, the mounting excitement and anticipation that comes before a big show like this. Finishing the song had been a much-needed breakthrough for him; he knows without a shadow of a doubt that this song summarises everything that he feels about Joo-hyun right now, which is at least a relief and a weight off his heart. Yet, a song is just that - a song - and it does nothing to resolve the silence that has been growing steadily between him and his wife for the last 10 days.
She hasn’t reached out. Neither has he. He’s toyed with the idea of sending her the recording - music has proven on occasion to speak better for him than just words. But somehow, each time, he always talks himself down. There are words to be had between them, but these are not the right words at this time. And so his thoughts continue to wear themselves in this fruitless cycle that he finds himself unable to break out from - is it too late? Should I do something? What should I do?
The only punctuations to this haze of worry are ironically, his public appearances - somehow he manages to drag up some modicum of energy and pleasantness from somewhere deep inside him, but he can’t quite shake that gnawing feeling that everyone can tell how false and empty his words are.
This ennui is not him at all, and he can feel people begin to tiptoe around him, all of them surely wondering what is wrong, but no one wanting to come outright and ask. For his part, he just takes it; the weight of their side glances, the whispers that stop when he walks into a room. But he does feel the palpable worry from the boys seeping in afresh. They watch him warily; make concerted attempts to break through to him, although without much success. Some part of him understands their anxiety - he’s not depressed, but he’s not really acting much like himself either. But this isn’t something anyone can help with, nor is it anyone’s business but his own. How can they help, when he himself hasn’t even figured out what to do?
The last straw comes when Sang-woo approaches him hesitantly during a final dress rehearsal, holding a script. In tones that one might use to break bad news to a patient, Sang-woo explains gently that he’d put together this script to help Yong-hwa talk through transitions during the concert. That Yong-hwa evidently has a lot on his mind right now, and he thought that doing up a script like this for Yong-hwa to follow would be helpful.
Yong-hwa wants to laugh and cry in his manager’s face.
He hasn’t used a script for concerts in years. Talking, bantering, engaging with the audience has always come easy to him, as mindless as breathing. It’s one of the parts he enjoys the most; talking to the fans, prompting them to laughter with his bad jokes.
Only, now…
He looks down at the piece of paper in his hand, the pre-planned introductions and jokes that do sound uncannily like him - no one might even be able to tell the difference. It just seems easier, and right now, Yong-hwa could use easier.
He folds the paper away, dully promises to have it memorised by the time the concert comes around, but the worry in his manager’s eyes doesn’t fade.
The day of the concert rolls around. It is also Day 14 of silence from Joo-hyun - two full weeks since their huge fight.
He asks Jong-hyun to do the band cheer that is customary before a show, putting in his hands mechanically, not hearing any of it. He busies himself with his equipment - adjusting his in-ear monitors, tuning his guitar. He talks to no one.
When he takes the stage to the loudest screams and a flare of stage lights so bright it temporarily blinds him, he feels the way he has for the past week - absolutely nothing.
To be fair, he tries to inject some cheer, some genuine excitement into his tone, even as he rambles off from what he half-remembers from the script. And it must work; the crowd still cheers as loud when he announces a fan-favorite song, laughs at his deprecating jokes about life on tour. They still wave their lightsticks in time with the music, shower him with the most thunderous applause, all blithely unaware of how dangerously close his composure is stretched to its breaking point.
Get through this, Jung Yong-hwa, he coaches himself. You can hold this together.
With every song that they do, the sense of relief that he feels grows. We are this much closer to the end, he tells himself, strumming his guitar harder. You’re doing good, Yong-hwa.
He thinks he might have made it to the end successfully if he didn’t see her.
They have just played In My Head, the penultimate song in their main set, and the appreciative roar of the crowd only serves to heighten Yong-hwa’s urgency to wrap up this concert. One more song, the encore set, and I’m home free.
“Thank you.” He says into the mic, but unsurprisingly, his voice is hoarse - this song is a screamer by nature. Smiling semi-apologetically, he takes a few steps back, clearing his throat away from where the mic won’t pick it up. He slings his guitar around to the back, bending down to pick up a water bottle that’s placed next to his mic stand, and when he straightens, his eyes alight on her.
He isn’t even sure why he picks her out of the front row; she looks like one of the many fangirls that support CNBlue; young, high-school young, since she sports those straight bangs that is the current fad among schoolkids. Her elbows are balanced precariously on the barrier, and hanging from one hand is a generic CNBLUE placard and a blue lightstick.
But what catches his attention is the way she looks at him. She isn’t frantically jumping up and down, screaming his name, hoping to catch his attention if he so much as looks in her vague direction. In fact, she is abnormally still for someone in the front row, watching him with eyes so wide and amazed, like she can’t believe she’s this close to him. And even in her gaze, Yong-hwa can feel it; the awe she feels towards him, the almost-reverent admiration that she’s radiating towards him. As if he can do no wrong in her eyes.
Yong-hwa freezes.
Distantly, he feels the bottle drop from his hand.
All the while, he can’t break eye contact with this nameless, faceless fangirl, who just stares up at him like he hung the moon and stars in the sky, who stares at him like she loves him, but she doesn’t even know half of what he’s really done…
He is suddenly wrestled into a fully upright position, and Jong-hyun is there in his face, haloed against the stage lights. “Hey.” He feels it; Jong-hyun's fingers digging painfully into the flesh of his shoulder. “Yong-hwa, look at me. Look at me.”
There’s too much to think and feel then; the confused titter of the audience growing like a swell, the outright fear in Jong-hyun’s face, the empty sound that’s ballooning in his ears, building to a crescendo, making him light-headed. Jong-hyun’s lips forming the word, breathe.
He tries to suck in air, but what comes out is a gasp, mangled, verging on a sob, and in that moment, his heart falls all the way to his feet.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
He does the only thing he can think to do in a situation like this; he hides, dropping his head onto Jong-hyun’s shoulder, even if just to block out the thousands of faces looking in his direction, all wondering the same thing - what’s wrong with Jung Yong-hwa?
I can’t do this anymore, he thinks, shuddering. I can’t.
He feels Jong-hyun’s other free hand curve around his shoulder; another wild sob wrests itself from his throat and he can feel others, imminent, lining up for their turn with his next breath. His hands fist on empty air, grasping, for a lack of something to hold onto. Yet he fights, struggles valiantly to pull it together, forcing them down with shallow breaths, years of stage training finally kicking in like a belated natural instinct. There is so much noise around him - or maybe it’s all just in his head - but he fights to cut through it, to keep his head above water.
Then, he hears it, clear as day - Jong-hyun’s voice slicing through the static filling his senses. “You should tell them.”
The words are like cold water to the face, surprising him temporarily out of tears, but they do clear some of the muddiness of his mind, allowing logic to set in. This will be a PR disaster, Sang-woo will kill him, this is the only the first fucking cardinal rule of concerts and celebrity life: you do not air your dirty laundry in public on the risk of certain death, much less at one of your band’s biggest concerts.
But Jong-hyun’s smile is sad, and for the first time since the start of the concert, Yong-hwa thinks with shocking clarity, I don’t want to lie anymore. I can’t.
He wipes at his running eyes, his nose. “Will you stand with me?”
Jong-hyun nods.
Facing the crowd again, stepping up to the microphone is one of the hardest things he can remember doing. He has never lost it before onstage. He was always able to hold it together till at least he got offstage, but breaking down so publicly in front of everyone, and then coming back in the space of a few minutes - it’s a step into new, unchartered territories of vulnerability and rawness. It’s fucking terrifying, and for a heartbeat, Yong-hwa doesn’t quite know where to look, doesn’t know what to say.
He decides to start simple.
“Hi,” He says softly, listening to his voice bounce around corners of the arena. The crowd quiets visibly, and he looks down, picking out the girl again the crowd as a touchstone. There is a worried pluck between her eyebrows and she holds the CNBLUE placard to her chest now, almost as if needing something to hold onto. She looks afraid, worried, and Yong-hwa tries for a smile, a reassuring one. “I’m… I’m sorry about that.”
There is an encouraging murmur from the crowd, rolling towards him like surf on the shore, briefly bolstering his confidence.
He closes his eyes; imagines Sang-woo’s livid face from backstage, barking orders into his phone to contain any live coverage of this that is surely circulating on social media. The potential fallout that this could have flashes once more in his mind - beyond him and the band; what this could mean for the label, for their fanbase, for everything that they’ve worked so hard for all these years. But terrifyingly, in spite of all these logical and valid concerns, all that Yong-hwa can think about is how he doesn’t want to pretend anymore. How he can’t pretend that the most devastating thing isn’t happening to him, right now.
“I’m sorry,” He repeats hoarsely, “About tonight. I always say how much I love you guys, and you guys are the most important people in my life, but… but I lied to you tonight.”
He exhales. “Truth is… I’m struggling. I… I have someone I love. More than anything in the world. I think you guys know who I’m talking about.”
The girl from downstage nods emphatically. Her eyes never leave him, not for a second, and Yong-hwa draws the courage he needs from the trust in her gaze.
“I let her down.” He says plainly. “I let her think that I married her, because I had no choice. I got so caught up in my dreams, in making music, that I forgot that she had dreams too. She’s made sacrifices, so that I could be here, gave up her dreams for me and I forgot that. I wasn’t there for her… I haven’t been in months, and… I’ve just been a shitty husband.”
He takes a shaky breath, grips the microphone, for the want of something to hold onto. In for a penny, out for a pound.
“She wants to leave me,” He says quietly, but the microphone picks it all up nonetheless, and he can feel it; the recoil of shock from the audience, the rising speculations. “I don’t blame her. I would have done the same thing a long time ago, if it was me. I don’t know if she’d be willing to forgive me.”
Someone shouts something, indistinct but encouraging, and absurdly, the crowd starts to clap in some misguided show of support. Yong-hwa shakes his head, closing his eyes. “No.” He says, silencing them all. “No.” He feels the bite of tears, familiar against his eyelids, but he forces his eyes open, blurry as they might be. “Please don’t.”
He shakes his head, tries again for a smile. “I just wanted to apologise to you guys. I’ve been… limping my fucking way through this concert. I’ve been distracted. But I wanted you guys to know… because you’re as important as I say you are. And I want you to know the truth, even if it isn’t pretty.” He swallows. “Thank you for listening.”
There is a round of applause then, solidly supportive, and Yong-hwa blinks hard, trying to hold back any last tears. They might not know everything, every last awful thing he did, but the fact that after all that, after the way he’s been acting these few days, during the concert, they still somehow believe in him -
He looks over at Jong-hyun, nodding and clapping fiercely along with them.
“We’re supposed to do our last song now,” Yong-hwa says shakily into the microphone. He isn’t sure where he’s going with this; he’s just going out on a limb here. “But… I was hoping I could play you something else instead to close? Do you guys mind?”
It is more of a rhetorical question, but the crowd cheers their assent, and Jong-hyun claps him on the shoulder one last time, before heading back to his own guitar. Yong-hwa takes his time, dragging his guitar to the front, fingers finding the chords. The company is going to hear about this, some distant part of his whispers. If airing dirty laundry is a strict no-no in celebrity circles, playing new material that the label and the studio have not yet heard of or approved is clear grounds for excommunication.
But Yong-hwa can’t bring himself to care anymore. If there ever was a right time to play this song, it is now.
“Joo-hyun,” He says into the mic, softly, as if by saying her name, he can conjure her into being. For the first time all night, he allows himself to wonder if she might be here, in the crowd, but the thought is fleeting. “I want you to know that this song is about you. It’s everything that I feel about you and us. And wherever you are, I hope… I hope that I can be your reason to stay.”
There is a beat, then two, and then Min-hyuk is clicking them in, and without even thinking about it, he plays along in perfect time. Yong-hwa doesn’t even have time to be grateful for the way his brothers are rallying around him, supporting him even though this whole song could get them all in trouble. But he forces those thoughts away. There will be time enough for that later. Right now, there is only the music, there is only everything he’s wanted to say to Joo-hyun, but been too afraid to.
You’ve given me a million reasons to let you go
You’ve given me a million reasons to quit the show
This is the only honest performance he gives that night. He blocks out everything; the faces of the audience, the boys onstage around him, focusing only on the music playing through the speakers, in his in-ears - unvarnished, pleading and raw. He focuses on the words that have brought him so many sleepless nights, the feelings and thoughts that have been circulating endlessly within him, until they found a home in this song.
I bow down to pray
I try to make the worse seem better
His mind draws what his eyes have never seen; the nights Joo-hyun spent alone in their apartment, in her office, valiantly making the best of what she had and where she was. He thinks of never being able to play on a stage like this, never being able to write and make music for other people, and all the more he feels the pain of a dream not fulfilled, a dream she must have given up for dead. He thinks of his silence and absence once CNBLUE became public, how even he became a stranger to her after all this time away. How she was forced to fill in the blanks to questions growing in her own head, to think that they were no longer compatible or right for one another. That’s a lie, Joo-hyun, he sings fiercely without words, through his song. He sings, that as if by doing so, he can bring her back to him.
I’ve got a hundred million reasons to walk away
But baby, I just need one good one to stay
The song can’t last longer than a few minutes tops, but it feels so much longer and richer to Yong-hwa than the whole concert combined. The minute the last chord rings out, it’s almost as if someone has turned up the master volume in his head and everything starts layering back in: the screams of the crowd, the standing ovation he’s getting, the numbness in his fingers from playing so hard. When he tips his head back, he can’t even care that his cheeks are wet again. There is only one thought left: he needs to make things right with his wife, once and for all.
“Thank you.” He says, already moving, already unslinging his guitar. “Thank you.”
He expects to run into Sang-woo right after in the wings, braces himself for the verbal onslaught that is surely coming his way after all those stupid stunts he pulled onstage. But right now, there is only one thing he needs to do. Get to his phone, call his wife and talk the way they should have 14 days ago. He can only hope his silence, his inaction hasn’t inflamed the situation more than it already is.
And then, his eyes adjust to the dimness, and his feet skid to an automatic stop.
Because, there, silhouetted in the darkness is a slight figure he knows all too well. Dressed in a too large CNBLUE tour shirt and dark jeans, is Joo-hyun.
For a while, he just stares at her, because she isn’t actually here; it’s too dark backstage, he’s made her up in his head out of this overwhelming desire to have her here, he is dreaming, he knows he is -
And then both her hands are coming up to her face, pressing at her cheeks and when she exhales, it’s a queer breathless sound, the sound Joo-hyun only makes when she’s trying and failing to hold back tears. Yong-hwa isn’t thinking anymore when he closes the distance between the pair of them in a matter of heartbeats, pulling her to him.
Her body shakes against his, he can feel his tears coming down afresh against her hair, but there is also this overwhelming sense of peace at the heart of this storm. This is where I need to be, Yong-hwa thinks. With her. Nowhere else.
He feels her tuck her chin against his shoulder, and at the feel of her breath against his ear, he tightens his arms around her but she is the first to speak. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, opens his mouth, but she presses her face into the curve of his neck, effectively silencing him. “Please. Will you let me say this?”
Against his chest, he can feel her take in an unsteady breath. “I’m sorry, Yong-hwa. I shouldn’t… I should never have said what I said that night. Honestly… I never even… I didn’t even know that all these years, I’d held this resentment against you, or your mom. That I blamed you, for what had happened to me.”
He can feel her shake her head, fiercely against him. “That was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have made you think that - not even for one second.”
He can feel it, her fingers pressing tightly into his back, tensing but the words tumble from her. “I loved your mother. I never… I never had a mother growing up, so when I met your mom, it’s like… I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. I know it’s stupid, but it’s how I felt.” Her voice hitches, breaks. “When she got cancer, when she passed away… I just… it’s like a part of me died with her too.”
Yong-hwa shakes his head mutely against her, and now the pain in his heart doubles; not only for them, but for the loss of his mother, for the grief that both of them went through. How stupid, he thinks. All this time, I always thought I was the only one grieving, but so was Joo-hyun. We could have been there for each other. I should have been there more for her.
But she pulls him from this train of thought, tucking a hand against his cheek. Her eyelashes sparkle with the last of tears, in the dim light. “Look at me.”
He does.
“I dropped out of law school because you needed me. That is true.” She says, so soft, just above a whisper. “But I did it because I saw you struggling, and I wanted to be there for you. Because I loved you and that’s what you do for people you love. You’re there for them in the good times, but… more importantly, when they need you most.”
Her other free hand finds his, her fingers filling the gaps between his own, locking tight. “And if ever, I had to do this all again… it’s almost inconceivable. But I would have chosen the same thing. Because I love you, Jung Yong-hwa, and I always will.”
It’s too much.
He can’t even begin to describe how it feels to hear her say those words to him, words that he’d so desperately hoped for but had been so afraid that he would never hear again. He chokes, a final errant sob slipping out and he has to release a hand to scrub roughly at his face; he doesn’t even remember the last time he cried this hard, but this Seo Joo-hyun, his Joo-hyun, has always made him feel immeasurably more than he ever thought possible.
There is only one thing he could possibly say to something like that.
“I love you too, Joo-hyun,” He says raggedly, unfurling his fingers across her cheekbone in a whisper-light caress. “You know that, right?” He shakes his head. “You’ve heard that, right? Just now?”
The faintest of smiles breaks across Joo-hyun’s face, and she nods. Even though tears are still spilling down her cheeks and her nose is red, he thinks she’s never looked as beautiful as in this moment.
It’s his turn now.
“I’m sorry for what I said that night,” He tells her somberly. “I know… I know it’s not pretty, but it is a part of the truth. I won’t deny it, but it’s not the whole truth. I don’t want you to even believe for a second that I married you because I had to.”
“I think at the back of my head, I was always aware of the sacrifice that you were making for me.” He says quietly. “I knew just what you were giving up, and I think to a large extent, I just carried around this… this guilt for the way everything had unfolded, even though I knew… I knew that I couldn’t possibly have controlled any of it.”
“But Joo-hyun,” He says, letting the slightest of wry smiles slip. “I didn’t marry you because I thought it was the only way to make it up to you. I married you for so, so, so much more than that. I married you, because in the midst of everything - the grief, the depression - you were the only person who I wanted to let in. I married you because you were the person who’d walked beside me through all of it - from before CNBLUE, till the day we got signed and after that. I married you, because you were the only person in the world that I wanted to always be a part of my life.”
Tears are rolling down Joo-hyun’s cheeks; wordlessly, he thumbs them away.
“I got carried away along the way.” He admits. “This life… I wish I could have the music without the celebrity, but they… they come hand in hand. But I haven’t been around enough, haven’t been as supportive of you as I should have been, and I’m sorry for even making you think that there was no place for you in my life anymore.”
He takes another huge breath. “I hope that you see I’m as crazy about you, as the day you hopped into my car. I hope you see that there will always be a place for you in my life. I hope that you’ll stay.”
And there it is, finally. The right words. The only words. His heart laid out for her to see.
Joo-hyun closes her eyes, but there is the faintest of smiles is playing around her lips. She blinks rapidly, shakes her head, almost as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing, but when she finally turns back to him, he sees her nod through the darkness, firmly, once, then twice, acknowledging his words.
Even though he’s pretty sure that things between them have found a resolution of sorts, he still has to ask. “So,” He says, tentatively, “You’re not… you’re not divorcing me. Right?”
That really does startle laughter from her, a soft one, but her watery eyes are fond. She presses her lips together, fruitlessly so, since a bright smile is beginning to break across her face. “No.” She says with a firmness that makes his heart soar. “We’re not getting a divorce.”
+++
EPILOGUE
He tugs off the chunky headphones, bowing in thanks to the producer outside the booth. Beside him, Hyo-shin sunbae is doing the same, his eyes bright when he turns to Yong-hwa. “Fantastic.” He holds up his hand for a high-five, which Yong-hwa gladly returns. “I must say, when FNC asked us to collaborate, I had in mind a slow ballad, but I think this arrangement works out a lot better.”
Yong-hwa returns the smile easily - it’s been almost two weeks of working with Hyo-shin sunbae, but the glow of it hasn’t run out. Talk about a dream come true. “It’s been an honour, sunbae,” He starts to say, unless the formality gets batted away, reinforced by the exasperation on Hyo-shin’s face.
“The honour,” His senior says firmly. “Has been mine, Jung Yong-hwa. And if you won’t desist with the sunbae...”
He knows better than to let the older man fill in the end of that sentence with an actual threat, and so he raises both hands, a show of his acquiescence. Hyo-shin moves away, starts gathering up loose sheets of lyrics. “Are you headed back to Seoul now? It’s late.”
Yong-hwa looks over at the digital clock outside the studio. 2.17am. “Yeah.” He says, suddenly aware of how stiff his shoulders are, having been hunched over the microphone for hours, doing take after take of the rap, the chorus, the harmonies. I’ll stretch in the car. “I have to make it back to Seoul by tomorrow. Well, today.”
Hyo-shin’s eyebrows raise. “Something important?”
Yong-hwa nods. “It’s my wedding anniversary tomorrow,” He explains. “I’m… I’m planning on surprising my wife. I told her recording would take all week - which I thought it would - but since we wrapped early…”
He forgets for a moment, that Hyo-shin, like the rest of the world, knows, and so there is a brief moment of surprise, of being thrown off-balance, when his senior leans a hip against the studio stool, his eyes thoughtful. “Ah, your Joo-hyun.” Hyo-shin smiles, indulgently, wagging a finger at him. “When the story first broke, I thought, this kid’s got balls. To tell a story like that; that his wife is divorcing him in the middle of a concert…”
Yong-hwa flushes, even though the memory of it is barely 6 months old. The older man continues.
“But then, I read more about it in some article somewhere. And I could relate.” His senior’s eyes are distant for a moment there, obviously lost in some private memory. His lips pull up in a wry smile as he re-focuses on Yong-hwa. “This life isn’t an easy one. But it sounds as though you found someone worth holding on to.”
Yong-hwa nods. “I did.” He looks at the floor for a moment. “I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“I’ll need to hear the full story someday personally from you,” Hyo-shin declares, an easy grin overtaking his face. “Scratch that, we should meet for lunch one day, you, me and your Joo-hyun. Once the single drops.”
He promises to do so, and after a few more farewells to the studio crew, he is jogging out of the studio towards his car. The winter air nips at his face; his nose, his cheeks and he roots around in his jeans for the car key, pausing only to wipe away snow that has gathered on the windscreen. It is getting colder and colder each day, but the worst of winter hasn’t yet come upon them.
Once in the car, he sets the GPS for Seoul, sets his phone in its stand. This is one of the rare few times that he is alone in the car, driving himself, even though Hong-ki had offered to drive him. But Yong-hwa had declined, since it was just supposed to be a short trip.
A few weeks ago, FNC had asked him to collaborate with Hyo-shin on a single, and Yong-hwa had only been too happy to oblige. It was only after he accepted that he realized that recording was slated to take place over the week of his wedding anniversary. It was such a stupid, obvious mistake; the kind of mistake you look back on and wonder how it could ever have happened and Yong-hwa had felt nothing short of wretched about it.
But Joo-hyun had insisted that he go; that this was Park Hyo-shin, one of his idols, and he should take this opportunity. They could celebrate their anniversary the week after. The fact that she still understood, that she would still put his desires and dreams first, even after everything that had happened, amazed Yong-hwa.
And now that an opportunity like this has arisen; for him to make it back in time to Seoul for their anniversary - he’d be stupid not to take it.
He has just turned out of the carpark, when he pauses. It’s late, but Joo-hyun has kept later hours before. She might still be up.
He speed dials her, keeping a careful eye on the road even as he lets the phone ring. He’ll put down after five rings if she doesn’t pick up; she might be asleep and he doesn’t want to wake her either.
He doesn’t get that far; Joo-hyun picks up on the second ring, sounding alert despite the ungodly hour and the sound of her voice makes him smile. “Oppa.”
“Hey,” He says softly, even though it’s only him in the car. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
He can almost see her eye-roll, even as she huffs audibly down the line. “There’s just so much to do. I’ve got two presentations this week, and a paper due on Thursday that is barely ready…”
Yong-hwa shakes his head. “I swear,” He tells her fondly. “I feel like you were less busy when you were working.”
The concert was a turning point for their relationship, but it was only the start. They’d made up, and they knew they wanted to stay together, but it was clear that there were many unresolved issues in their lives, individually and as a couple. One of those was Joo-hyun’s work.
Joo-hyun had demurred, but Yong-hwa had been insistent, unbudging on the fact that Joo-hyun would quit Ba-run and go back to law school. It was clear that that going back to school, becoming a practicing lawyer was something that Joo-hyun still wanted badly. He didn’t want her to torment herself any longer by not doing it.
She’d hesitated at first, but the more they’d talked about it, she had admitted that another part of why she’d started working instead of going back to school once Yong-hwa had started out in FNC, was also out of fear. A fear that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up, that she was no longer as good as she had been when she was younger. In Yong-hwa’s opinion, it was a senseless fear - Joo-hyun had always been clever and quick, and the years had only served to sharpen that. But the fact that he’d gotten Joo-hyun to confess that fear was already half the battle won. He still worked with her on it; hearing her out, talking her through her doubts. So far, it seemed to be working - Joo-hyun was coping well with the rigour of school, even if she did complain about it.
Joo-hyun laughs, amusement clear in her tone. “I haven’t studied in years,” She reminds him. “My brain is rusty, and I’ve got tons to catch up on. And this time, I actually have to graduate. Walk across the stage with that degree. Pass the bar.”
Yong-hwa has heard this spiel many times in the past few months, and even though she can’t see him, he still shakes his head at her, disbelieving. “You’re fine, baby. I promise. I’m sure you’re giving all those twenty something undergrads a run for their money.”
“You have to say that; you’re my husband.” Joo-hyun says, and he can almost imagine the eye-roll she gives him on her end of the line. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence, oppa.” There is a brief pause on her end. “You sound like you’re in the car. Did you just finish recording?”
“Yup.” He says. He tries not to lie to Joo-hyun, ever, but he figures he can let this white lie slide, since it is for a good cause. “On the way back to the hotel now.” He signals, making a turn onto the expressway that will take him back to Seoul.
“How did it go? How’s Hyo-shin ssi?”
Another thing they’d talked about after the concert was his work. Yong-hwa had sat down and discussed it with the boys and FNC, before he brought it to her, because he knew what Joo-hyun would have said. He deliberately decided to slow down, to hold off on putting out CNBLUE’s third album. While he knew it was a shame to ruin the momentum that CNBLUE was building up, he also felt that it was the right thing to do. He needed the time and space to re-build his marriage, and there was just no room for a new album in all of that.
Beyond Joo-hyun though, he also had to admit that he was tired. It had been a whirlwind few years for him and the boys, relentlessly putting themselves out there. They had stellar results to show for it, but he couldn’t deny that it was wearing him down. He had needed this break - both for Joo-hyun and himself.
FNC had been less than pleased, but they were hardly going to say no to one of their headlining bands. Plus, it wasn’t exactly the first time they’d disapproved of his choices, and Yong-hwa figured there were worse things to live with than the vague displeasure of upper management.
With their third studio album placed firmly on a backburner, Yong-hwa had had more free time to spend with Joo-hyun, where he’d been able to support her as she transited from work back into life as a law student. The break was also surprisingly refreshing for him; for the first time in years, he was able to really give himself space and time to write songs, to polish up his guitar playing skills. He also wasn’t entirely idle; he happily picked up small side projects, like collaborating with other label mates, writing songs and composing arrangements. And while there was a part of him that was raring to get back into the whole touring cycle again, he was trying to listen to another side of him. A quieter side that urged him to enjoy this season. To learn. To listen. To grow.
Unsurprisingly, after the concert, he’d made headlines for three weeks consecutively, with the stories ranging from ludicrous to blatantly untrue (SHE’S LEAVING ME - CNBLUE’S YONG-HWA CONFESSES EXTRA-MARITAL AFFAIR). After lengthy discussion with Sang-woo and the FNC PR team, he’d put out a simple statement on social media, sharing the story without getting too much into details. He also wanted to let the fans know that everything had ended well for him - he owed them that much at least.
Videos and photos of that night were still circulated online though; something Yong-hwa still has difficulty looking at, the most heartbreaking being a shaky fan-video which zoomed in on him burying his face in Jong-hyun’s shoulder, obviously distraught. But the fans had rallied around him, just as they had that night. While some of them left behind nasty comments, saying that they were boycotting CNBLUE and him, the majority of them had promised that they would wait for the next album. And Yong-hwa was learning - learning to trust that the fans who really loved him, who really supported CNBLUE, would always be there, no matter how long it took. Trust.
“Hyo-shin’s good.” He says. “He wants to go out for lunch, when the single drops. He asked me to invite you.”
“Oh!” Joo-hyun sounds pleased; he can hear the smile in her voice. “I’d love to. I’ve been listening to his last album and you’re right, oppa - his voice. It’s so good.” There is a beat, before she continues, but this time her tone is teasing. “I can’t believe my husband is working with Park Hyo-shin on his new album, and he won’t even give me a sneak preview of any of the songs.”
“Not unless you want FNC to sue me, babe.” Yong-hwa says easily. He steps a little more on the accelerator; at this time, the highway is practically empty and he imagines the wheels of the car eating up the road. “Then we’d lose all our money… be living out on the streets, destitute, without a single thing in the world to call our own. Not exactly the kind of life you’d want.”
Joo-hyun is quiet for a little while. “But you could still play music.” She points out softly, none of the earlier teasing from their conversation in her voice now. “You’d busk in the day, and I’d get work somewhere… we’d get through it.” There is only an earnestness, a certainty that warms his heart. “Whatever it was, we’d get through it. Together.”
They don’t talk much about the near-divorce these days, but it isn’t out of a collective decision to not talk about it, nor is it out of a desire to avoid thinking about what was a painful part of their past. Yong-hwa has his own theory for this: it is just a part of their history that has no place in their lives right now. When his wife says things like that, alludes to that part of their lives - he remembers the pain, the confusion, the darkness, but he also knows so much more now. The faith that they can weather any storm that comes their way. The love that he has for her, whose roots run so deep within him, he can’t even begin to tell where they start and where they end.
Yong-hwa smiles.
“You’re right.” He agrees. He closes his eyes briefly, imagining her, imagining home. “We would.”
If I could ask one favour of you, it would be this: please listen to this amazing cover of "Million Reasons" as you read this chapter. I've wanted for months to write a fic that involved this song, and it's finally happened, which brings me so much joy.
+++
He doesn’t go home.
How can he? When he essentially told his wife that he married her years ago not because he wanted to, but out of a sense of beholdeness, as the only way for him to repay her for everything she had given up?
Even thinking it makes him wince, much less the fact that he shouted it in her face. Yong-hwa doesn’t think he can ever forget her expression - those split seconds of blind shock, pain fracturing across her face as everything she believed in and about him came crumbling down.
He presses a wrist against his eyes. Not that it does anything to block out the memory of it.
There is a creak, the sound of a door opening, and Yong-hwa presses his wrist more firmly against his eyes. The room is dark; it’s been that way for a while now, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s day or night. All he knows is that the bright light spilling in from outside is hurting his eyes. He turns on his side, facing away from the door.
Jong-hyun had been the one to offer him the spare room in his apartment, a place to tide him over in the aftermath of his argument with Joo-hyun. It was Jong-hyun, who had let him brood; only opening the door periodically to bring him water or energy bars (the only thing Jong-hyun keeps in sure stock around his house apparently). He’d heard Jong-hyun talking faintly on the phone through the closed door, making excuses for him to someone on the line, Sang-woo most likely.
But surely, even his best friend has to run out of patience sometime.
Yet, when Jong-hyun speaks, he sounds surprisingly normal, given the circumstances. “They’re coming over, so you might want to consider getting your ass out of bed.”
Yong-hwa doesn’t even have time to roll over, to ask who the “they” is. All Jong-hyun leaves behind is an open door, light flooding the room, persistent and irritating.
Sitting up properly in bed is hard, after two to three days of lying down in every conceivable position. He rolls his shoulders, hears a distinct but not unsatisfying pop, before he even musters up the energy to swing his legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cool beneath the soles of his bare feet, and he forces himself up before he can overthink it.
Before leaving the room, he pauses, doubles back for his phone that’s lying uselessly on the bedside table. The screen brightens as he unlocks it, and he swipes up, finger hovering over the airplane mode it’s currently on.
He exhales as he clicks it off, watching as his notifications start to fill the screen, a surprising deluge of them. He catches a few names - Jung-shin, Min-hyuk, Sang-woo, before they whizz by and when he’s certain the avalanche of notifications have settled, he swipes down, looking for the only name he wants to see, but it isn’t there.
At this point, he shouldn’t be surprised - why would Joo-hyun want to text him, after what he said to her? Still, the pang of disappointment hits him with the same force of a punch to the face, a sour taste at the back of his throat. What would she say anyway? Just sign the damn papers. Do you get it now? Do you see? Haven't you ruined my life enough already? The thought of it alone is enough to make him sick; aftershocks of the memory of their confrontation rolling anew over his skin.
He is about to switch his phone back into airplane mode, when his eye catches on another notification - 3 missed calls from Si-won. A text, whose preview reads: Yong-hwa, I tried calling but your phone but -
He hesitates for a moment over that one. Si-won has to be calling about the divorce papers, to get him to file an answer like what he mentioned the last time. Only… is there a point? Things between him and Joo-hyun have already come to such a state. Maybe a few days ago, he would still have had some fight in him, a growing confidence that he would have been able to change Joo-hyun’s mind. Now, it just feels impossible even to think of trying.
He turns off his phone for good measure, tossing it back carelessly on the bed as he slips down the hallway that leads to the main living room. He runs his tongue uselessly around cracking lips, wondering if he has time to pop into the kitchen for a drink of water. He probably looks like hell.
But seated in the living room, around Jong-hyun’s low coffee table, are Jung-shin and Min-hyuk, who seem to startle to life at the sight of him. Jung-shin’s eyes widen, but there is no forthcoming joke about his appearance, no wisecrack. That’s how Yong-hwa knows that he’s well and truly fucked - that he must look bad enough to not even warrant a joke from Jung-shin, whose usual greeting is a jibe or insult of some sort.
He pads into the living room, feeling all eyes on him, careful, as if he’s made of glass. The boys are all sitting cross-legged on the floor, and as he settles in, he notices the supplies laid out across the coffee table. The empty large pot. A package of frozen rice cakes. A box of red pepper paste. A familiar, battered portable cooker.
Apparently that’s not all. Jong-hyun reaches behind him, heaving a bulging, clinking bag that lands on the table with a loud thump. Green glass bottles of soju, interspersed with the tall necks of beer bottles, peek out from between the handles of the plastic bag.
“Get some glasses.” Jong-hyun says grimly. He locks eyes with Yong-hwa across the table. “You’re making the rice cakes.”
It isn’t so much a command as it is a statement; it’s an open secret that Yong-hwa makes the best rice cakes among them all. Jong-hyun adds too little sugar, Jung-shin burns the rice cakes and Min-hyuk’s is essentially soup. But eyeing the spread on the table before him, it all feels like too much - too much unnecessary effort and action. The thought of the empty, quiet guest room, a cold bed where he can be alone with his thoughts, flickers temptingly in his mind. A place that is distinctly not here, where he and his mistakes aren’t laid bare in the glare of the white fluorescent lights, like an insect spread out across a slide under the microscope.
But there is a fierce gleam in Jong-hyun’s eyes that makes him think that he might not get away with it this time, and fighting it just feels like it requires energy that he doesn’t have. He reaches for the cold package of rice cakes mutely, while Min-hyuk hastily tries to set up the portable cooker. Jung-shin pushes himself up from the floor, fetching the glasses from the kitchen, and for a while, Yong-hwa just forces himself to focus on the dull clatter of cupboard doors being opened and shut. One thing at a time, he tells himself.
Making the rice cakes is surprisingly calming. He’s made it so many times that the steps come to him instinctively and he finds that if he focuses on each step at a time, he is able to block out everything else. Soak the rice cakes in hot water. Make the sauce - one tablespoon of gochujang. Two tablespoons of soy sauce. Sugar to season. Garlic. Stir. Keep the heat low, until bubbles start appearing around the edges.
Even though most of his attention is focused on the small, simple tasks at hand, bits of sound filter in - the pop of a beer bottle, the snap of a soju bottle cap, the satisfying gurgle of cold alcohol being poured into fresh glasses. But there is no conversation. This is likely the quietest all of them have been around each other, but Yong-hwa hears it, clear as day, what is not being said - the worry, the tension, the waiting, like a guitar string pulled taut.
When he flicks off the cooker, Min-hyuk is there, pouring the rice cakes into a wide, flat plate in the middle of the table. Four beer glasses stand at the ready, shot glasses next to them, filled to the brim, and for a moment, Yong-hwa just stares at them, colors and shapes blurring in his eyes.
He manages to lift his eyes to Jong-hyun, sitting opposite him, and now, there is none of the usual calm he is used to in his best friend’s expression - just an overwhelming sense of urgency mingled with worry.
“You have to say it,” Jong-hyun says, surprisingly gentle for all his earlier bite, and that is all it takes for an instinctive lump to jump to Yong-hwa’s throat, as if waiting in the shadows for those very words. He makes the stupid mistake of looking around, at Min-hyuk, at Jung-shin, and the bottom of his eyelids burn.
He swallows. Hidden under the coffee table, his hands fist in his lap. Rip it off, he thinks dimly. These are the guys he would trust with his life, his heart. He owes them this much, nothing less, but why are the words so hard to force out?
“Joo-hyun is divorcing me.”
The tears, embarrassingly, come first; hot streaks down his cheeks, and Yong-hwa draws in a huge, ragged breath that doesn’t seem to fill his lungs in the slightest. He presses his arm across his face, and he can feel his shoulders shaking with sobs that are fighting to escape, to be let loose after days of holding it in, after hours of tossing and turning, stubbornly dry-eyed in the dark.
Then, there is an arm that curls itself around his shoulder, the edge of a shoulder bumping against his forearm, the sense of someone drawing him close. Against his own will, a sob builds, tears itself from his throat, and he squeezes his eyelids shut. My wife is divorcing me and I pushed her to it.
I could have fixed it. I was so close to changing her mind - to getting her to stay with me and then I went and fucked it up.
Min-hyuk’s voice is clear, fierce in his ear. “Hyung.”
He feels fingers tighten on his bare calf, and then he really does lose it; huge racking sobs that rip right through him, and he clings, like a fucking baby to the arm around him.
I’ve fucked everything up, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
+++
The boys stay over that night.
He can’t even remember how long it takes him to pull himself together; he must have cried for the better part of an hour at least, but the boys are there with him, holding on; a life-preserver in the sea he’s lost in. They are not a touchy-feely bunch by any means, but that night, Yong-hwa feels it more strongly than ever; the strength of their brotherhood, the fierce belief they somehow still have in him, even though he feels as though his failings are exposed for all the world to see.
And when he’s calmed down enough, they drink, and the whole story spills out of him between the beer and soju. He suspects that Jong-hyun must have stocked up in the hopes to make him talk, but it is as if the tears have already loosened him up enough to do the job. The boys listen in silence; sipping alcohol and picking at the cooling rice cakes.
Jong-hyun wisely refrains from saying much, leaving the talking to the maknaes, who have had little to no inkling of what was happening. If there is a silver lining in all this, it is that Jung-shin and Min-hyuk don’t hold it against him for not telling them; all he senses from them is genuine sympathy and a desire to understand - both of which he is grateful for.
“Sounds like it came as a shock to you too,” Jung-shin offers, surprisingly astute in his response towards their fight.
“It was,” Yong-hwa admits. “I mean, I love Joo-hyun,” He says quietly. “Marrying her was the obvious thing to do… but I didn’t realize that I was also doing it out of some kind of guilt.” He pauses, somberly. “As if marrying her was a way to repay her for what she’d given up for me.”
Min-hyuk shakes his head, and Yong-hwa feels a flare of affection for him; their most earnest, sincere member, stubborn to a fault in his optimism of people. It is that same fierce gleam he sees in Min-hyuk now. “Hyungsoo-nim is smart. Maybe what the both of you said to each other is true, to a certain extent. But anyone who’s seen the pair of you over time knows that you love each other. Deeply.” He hesitates, evidently searching for the right words. “Even though what you two said to each other was unexpected and painful… trust that she knows that what you said is just a fraction of the truth. That you married her for more than just a reason to assuage your guilt.”
There is a familiar echo in Min-hyuk’s words; Yong-hwa’s mind conjures up Deok-hyun's voice. Trust in her. Trust her to see you. Trust. It all seems to boil down to that - a beautiful, impossible, invisible thing that is all but hard to grasp within your fingers. Trust.
He doesn’t even care that he’s crying again; a single tear slipping down his cheek, but across the table, Jong-hyun is holding up his soju cup, a grim smile on his face. “I’ll drink to that. I’ll drink to you and Joo-hyun.”
Jung-shin raises his cup in affirmation, and Min-hyuk follows suit. The clink of glass against glass, simple and wordless, means more to him than a thousand consolations ever could.
The maknaes head home somewhere in the late morning the next day; Jung-shin finally unable to resist making a crack at him any longer (“Get cleaned up, hyung, is that a little bit of mould under your - oh, nope, just stubble”), which is how he knows that everything is going back to normal. And when he stands under the cool spray of the shower, it finally feels as though he is slowly putting both hands back on the steering wheel of his life. Taking back control of the mess that his life has spiralled into.
Still, he naps off the rest of the alcohol in the afternoon, and is fooling around on a spare acoustic guitar that Jong-hyun has, when a knock on the door startles him.
Jong-hyun is there; surprisingly well-dressed as compared to his usual uniform of a worn cotton shirt and torn jeans. His best friend’s lips quirk in a small smile. “Hey. Feeling better?”
“A little more civilised at least,” Yong-hwa says wryly, tugging at the loose shirt Jong-hyun has loaned him. He gives Jong-hyun an obvious once-over. “I hope you didn’t get dressed up on my account.”
Jong-hyun has the grace to look somewhat embarrassed, his cheeks pinking. “I’m, ah… going out.” His voice drops slightly. “I’m going on that blind date… with Joo-hyun’s friend. Sorry. I would have cancelled… given everything that's going on. But I didn’t think it was nice to let her down.”
Even though she is not the subject of the conversation, just the sound of her name brings a pang to his heart. But he makes himself shrug it off. If there is anyone who deserves a bit of happiness, it’s Jong-hyun. Plus, just because he’s moping around at home, doesn’t mean his best friend has to suffer along with him. “Tae-yeon, right?”
Jong-hyun nods, adjusting the cuffs of his long-sleeved button down shirt. “Yeah,” He says, and even if he isn’t saying much, Yong-hwa can feel the nerves rolling off his best friend. “Do I look okay?”
In spite of himself, Yong-hwa can’t help the smile that cracks across his face. It is such a normal, ordinary question, and it actually feels nice, focusing on a problem that isn’t his own. “You look good.” He says reassuringly. “I promise, she’ll be impressed.”
Jong-hyun looks relieved, tugging at one last crease in his shirt. “Thanks. I hope it goes well.” He pauses. “I don’t have much at home, but you’re welcome to order in dinner for yourself.”
“Yeah,” Yong-hwa parries back without thinking. “If I get a hankering for energy bars, I know just where to look.”
Jong-hyun rolls his eyes, shoots him the middle finger, but there is something relieved in the way he looks at Yong-hwa. He pushes himself off the doorframe, as if getting ready to leave, but he pauses at the last moment.
His voice is softer now, more earnest. “Hey. It’ll be okay. Joo-hyun is a smart girl. She loves you, and she won’t hold words said in anger against you.” He smiles crookedly. “You just need to remind her. Give her a reason to stay.”
Something about Jong-hyun’s words snag on his attention, set his senses tingling, but all the same he nods absently, shooting Jong-hyun a grateful parting smile, watching as his best friend disappears, the dull slam of the front door marking his exit.
A reason to stay.
He picks up the guitar again, strumming, his fingers finding the chords he’s been working on for the past few weeks. But this time, they are not as empty as they used to feel in his head. He changes chords, and the first sentence bubbles up out of nowhere, in his head - you’ve given me a million reasons to let you go.
Oh.
He slowly leans over, reaching for his phone on the night stand, guitar still balanced over his lap. He clicks through the menu, until he opens up a new voice memo. The red recording button blinks, and he settles back into the bed, fingers suddenly clammy against the neck of the guitar.
“Okay,” He says, finding his voice, talking aloud against the silence of the room. “Million Reasons. Version 1.”
That is how Jong-hyun finds him four hours later, strumming feverishly away, singing at a volume without regard for who might hear him. He almost doesn’t even register that Jong-hyun is there for the first minute or so; his eyes are closed, even as he tries to puzzle out the words, tries to pare them down till they fit right.
But when his eyelids fly open, Jong-hyun’s hand is braced against the doorframe, head cocked in an approximation of curiousity.
Yong-hwa clicks off the recording - this is version 4 now, but he thinks this very well might be it; the final permutation of lyrics that he decides to go with. He doesn’t even need Jong-hyun to tell him; he feels it, the first real grin overtaking his face since the fight - large, relieved, triumphant. “Do you want to hear it?”
+++
On hindsight, the completion of the song is in its own way timely, with the final Seoul concert looming large on the horizon. Sang-woo is also only willing to buy the sick excuse for so long, which is why Yong-hwa soon finds himself caught up in a flurry of preparations for the last concert, complete with other activities like public appearances and interviews to drum up the hype before. This Seoul concert was actually relatively unplanned for; an additional night added to the tour line-up after the overwhelming response to their first show in the city. Yet, it is also quickly shaping up to be one of their bigger performances on this tour; Sang-woo explains that this show will act as a final hurrah for the tour’s conclusion.
Maybe under different circumstances, Yong-hwa would have felt more keenly, the mounting excitement and anticipation that comes before a big show like this. Finishing the song had been a much-needed breakthrough for him; he knows without a shadow of a doubt that this song summarises everything that he feels about Joo-hyun right now, which is at least a relief and a weight off his heart. Yet, a song is just that - a song - and it does nothing to resolve the silence that has been growing steadily between him and his wife for the last 10 days.
She hasn’t reached out. Neither has he. He’s toyed with the idea of sending her the recording - music has proven on occasion to speak better for him than just words. But somehow, each time, he always talks himself down. There are words to be had between them, but these are not the right words at this time. And so his thoughts continue to wear themselves in this fruitless cycle that he finds himself unable to break out from - is it too late? Should I do something? What should I do?
The only punctuations to this haze of worry are ironically, his public appearances - somehow he manages to drag up some modicum of energy and pleasantness from somewhere deep inside him, but he can’t quite shake that gnawing feeling that everyone can tell how false and empty his words are.
This ennui is not him at all, and he can feel people begin to tiptoe around him, all of them surely wondering what is wrong, but no one wanting to come outright and ask. For his part, he just takes it; the weight of their side glances, the whispers that stop when he walks into a room. But he does feel the palpable worry from the boys seeping in afresh. They watch him warily; make concerted attempts to break through to him, although without much success. Some part of him understands their anxiety - he’s not depressed, but he’s not really acting much like himself either. But this isn’t something anyone can help with, nor is it anyone’s business but his own. How can they help, when he himself hasn’t even figured out what to do?
The last straw comes when Sang-woo approaches him hesitantly during a final dress rehearsal, holding a script. In tones that one might use to break bad news to a patient, Sang-woo explains gently that he’d put together this script to help Yong-hwa talk through transitions during the concert. That Yong-hwa evidently has a lot on his mind right now, and he thought that doing up a script like this for Yong-hwa to follow would be helpful.
Yong-hwa wants to laugh and cry in his manager’s face.
He hasn’t used a script for concerts in years. Talking, bantering, engaging with the audience has always come easy to him, as mindless as breathing. It’s one of the parts he enjoys the most; talking to the fans, prompting them to laughter with his bad jokes.
Only, now…
He looks down at the piece of paper in his hand, the pre-planned introductions and jokes that do sound uncannily like him - no one might even be able to tell the difference. It just seems easier, and right now, Yong-hwa could use easier.
He folds the paper away, dully promises to have it memorised by the time the concert comes around, but the worry in his manager’s eyes doesn’t fade.
The day of the concert rolls around. It is also Day 14 of silence from Joo-hyun - two full weeks since their huge fight.
He asks Jong-hyun to do the band cheer that is customary before a show, putting in his hands mechanically, not hearing any of it. He busies himself with his equipment - adjusting his in-ear monitors, tuning his guitar. He talks to no one.
When he takes the stage to the loudest screams and a flare of stage lights so bright it temporarily blinds him, he feels the way he has for the past week - absolutely nothing.
To be fair, he tries to inject some cheer, some genuine excitement into his tone, even as he rambles off from what he half-remembers from the script. And it must work; the crowd still cheers as loud when he announces a fan-favorite song, laughs at his deprecating jokes about life on tour. They still wave their lightsticks in time with the music, shower him with the most thunderous applause, all blithely unaware of how dangerously close his composure is stretched to its breaking point.
Get through this, Jung Yong-hwa, he coaches himself. You can hold this together.
With every song that they do, the sense of relief that he feels grows. We are this much closer to the end, he tells himself, strumming his guitar harder. You’re doing good, Yong-hwa.
He thinks he might have made it to the end successfully if he didn’t see her.
They have just played In My Head, the penultimate song in their main set, and the appreciative roar of the crowd only serves to heighten Yong-hwa’s urgency to wrap up this concert. One more song, the encore set, and I’m home free.
“Thank you.” He says into the mic, but unsurprisingly, his voice is hoarse - this song is a screamer by nature. Smiling semi-apologetically, he takes a few steps back, clearing his throat away from where the mic won’t pick it up. He slings his guitar around to the back, bending down to pick up a water bottle that’s placed next to his mic stand, and when he straightens, his eyes alight on her.
He isn’t even sure why he picks her out of the front row; she looks like one of the many fangirls that support CNBlue; young, high-school young, since she sports those straight bangs that is the current fad among schoolkids. Her elbows are balanced precariously on the barrier, and hanging from one hand is a generic CNBLUE placard and a blue lightstick.
But what catches his attention is the way she looks at him. She isn’t frantically jumping up and down, screaming his name, hoping to catch his attention if he so much as looks in her vague direction. In fact, she is abnormally still for someone in the front row, watching him with eyes so wide and amazed, like she can’t believe she’s this close to him. And even in her gaze, Yong-hwa can feel it; the awe she feels towards him, the almost-reverent admiration that she’s radiating towards him. As if he can do no wrong in her eyes.
Yong-hwa freezes.
Distantly, he feels the bottle drop from his hand.
All the while, he can’t break eye contact with this nameless, faceless fangirl, who just stares up at him like he hung the moon and stars in the sky, who stares at him like she loves him, but she doesn’t even know half of what he’s really done…
He is suddenly wrestled into a fully upright position, and Jong-hyun is there in his face, haloed against the stage lights. “Hey.” He feels it; Jong-hyun's fingers digging painfully into the flesh of his shoulder. “Yong-hwa, look at me. Look at me.”
There’s too much to think and feel then; the confused titter of the audience growing like a swell, the outright fear in Jong-hyun’s face, the empty sound that’s ballooning in his ears, building to a crescendo, making him light-headed. Jong-hyun’s lips forming the word, breathe.
He tries to suck in air, but what comes out is a gasp, mangled, verging on a sob, and in that moment, his heart falls all the way to his feet.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
He does the only thing he can think to do in a situation like this; he hides, dropping his head onto Jong-hyun’s shoulder, even if just to block out the thousands of faces looking in his direction, all wondering the same thing - what’s wrong with Jung Yong-hwa?
I can’t do this anymore, he thinks, shuddering. I can’t.
He feels Jong-hyun’s other free hand curve around his shoulder; another wild sob wrests itself from his throat and he can feel others, imminent, lining up for their turn with his next breath. His hands fist on empty air, grasping, for a lack of something to hold onto. Yet he fights, struggles valiantly to pull it together, forcing them down with shallow breaths, years of stage training finally kicking in like a belated natural instinct. There is so much noise around him - or maybe it’s all just in his head - but he fights to cut through it, to keep his head above water.
Then, he hears it, clear as day - Jong-hyun’s voice slicing through the static filling his senses. “You should tell them.”
The words are like cold water to the face, surprising him temporarily out of tears, but they do clear some of the muddiness of his mind, allowing logic to set in. This will be a PR disaster, Sang-woo will kill him, this is the only the first fucking cardinal rule of concerts and celebrity life: you do not air your dirty laundry in public on the risk of certain death, much less at one of your band’s biggest concerts.
But Jong-hyun’s smile is sad, and for the first time since the start of the concert, Yong-hwa thinks with shocking clarity, I don’t want to lie anymore. I can’t.
He wipes at his running eyes, his nose. “Will you stand with me?”
Jong-hyun nods.
Facing the crowd again, stepping up to the microphone is one of the hardest things he can remember doing. He has never lost it before onstage. He was always able to hold it together till at least he got offstage, but breaking down so publicly in front of everyone, and then coming back in the space of a few minutes - it’s a step into new, unchartered territories of vulnerability and rawness. It’s fucking terrifying, and for a heartbeat, Yong-hwa doesn’t quite know where to look, doesn’t know what to say.
He decides to start simple.
“Hi,” He says softly, listening to his voice bounce around corners of the arena. The crowd quiets visibly, and he looks down, picking out the girl again the crowd as a touchstone. There is a worried pluck between her eyebrows and she holds the CNBLUE placard to her chest now, almost as if needing something to hold onto. She looks afraid, worried, and Yong-hwa tries for a smile, a reassuring one. “I’m… I’m sorry about that.”
There is an encouraging murmur from the crowd, rolling towards him like surf on the shore, briefly bolstering his confidence.
He closes his eyes; imagines Sang-woo’s livid face from backstage, barking orders into his phone to contain any live coverage of this that is surely circulating on social media. The potential fallout that this could have flashes once more in his mind - beyond him and the band; what this could mean for the label, for their fanbase, for everything that they’ve worked so hard for all these years. But terrifyingly, in spite of all these logical and valid concerns, all that Yong-hwa can think about is how he doesn’t want to pretend anymore. How he can’t pretend that the most devastating thing isn’t happening to him, right now.
“I’m sorry,” He repeats hoarsely, “About tonight. I always say how much I love you guys, and you guys are the most important people in my life, but… but I lied to you tonight.”
He exhales. “Truth is… I’m struggling. I… I have someone I love. More than anything in the world. I think you guys know who I’m talking about.”
The girl from downstage nods emphatically. Her eyes never leave him, not for a second, and Yong-hwa draws the courage he needs from the trust in her gaze.
“I let her down.” He says plainly. “I let her think that I married her, because I had no choice. I got so caught up in my dreams, in making music, that I forgot that she had dreams too. She’s made sacrifices, so that I could be here, gave up her dreams for me and I forgot that. I wasn’t there for her… I haven’t been in months, and… I’ve just been a shitty husband.”
He takes a shaky breath, grips the microphone, for the want of something to hold onto. In for a penny, out for a pound.
“She wants to leave me,” He says quietly, but the microphone picks it all up nonetheless, and he can feel it; the recoil of shock from the audience, the rising speculations. “I don’t blame her. I would have done the same thing a long time ago, if it was me. I don’t know if she’d be willing to forgive me.”
Someone shouts something, indistinct but encouraging, and absurdly, the crowd starts to clap in some misguided show of support. Yong-hwa shakes his head, closing his eyes. “No.” He says, silencing them all. “No.” He feels the bite of tears, familiar against his eyelids, but he forces his eyes open, blurry as they might be. “Please don’t.”
He shakes his head, tries again for a smile. “I just wanted to apologise to you guys. I’ve been… limping my fucking way through this concert. I’ve been distracted. But I wanted you guys to know… because you’re as important as I say you are. And I want you to know the truth, even if it isn’t pretty.” He swallows. “Thank you for listening.”
There is a round of applause then, solidly supportive, and Yong-hwa blinks hard, trying to hold back any last tears. They might not know everything, every last awful thing he did, but the fact that after all that, after the way he’s been acting these few days, during the concert, they still somehow believe in him -
He looks over at Jong-hyun, nodding and clapping fiercely along with them.
“We’re supposed to do our last song now,” Yong-hwa says shakily into the microphone. He isn’t sure where he’s going with this; he’s just going out on a limb here. “But… I was hoping I could play you something else instead to close? Do you guys mind?”
It is more of a rhetorical question, but the crowd cheers their assent, and Jong-hyun claps him on the shoulder one last time, before heading back to his own guitar. Yong-hwa takes his time, dragging his guitar to the front, fingers finding the chords. The company is going to hear about this, some distant part of his whispers. If airing dirty laundry is a strict no-no in celebrity circles, playing new material that the label and the studio have not yet heard of or approved is clear grounds for excommunication.
But Yong-hwa can’t bring himself to care anymore. If there ever was a right time to play this song, it is now.
“Joo-hyun,” He says into the mic, softly, as if by saying her name, he can conjure her into being. For the first time all night, he allows himself to wonder if she might be here, in the crowd, but the thought is fleeting. “I want you to know that this song is about you. It’s everything that I feel about you and us. And wherever you are, I hope… I hope that I can be your reason to stay.”
There is a beat, then two, and then Min-hyuk is clicking them in, and without even thinking about it, he plays along in perfect time. Yong-hwa doesn’t even have time to be grateful for the way his brothers are rallying around him, supporting him even though this whole song could get them all in trouble. But he forces those thoughts away. There will be time enough for that later. Right now, there is only the music, there is only everything he’s wanted to say to Joo-hyun, but been too afraid to.
You’ve given me a million reasons to let you go
You’ve given me a million reasons to quit the show
This is the only honest performance he gives that night. He blocks out everything; the faces of the audience, the boys onstage around him, focusing only on the music playing through the speakers, in his in-ears - unvarnished, pleading and raw. He focuses on the words that have brought him so many sleepless nights, the feelings and thoughts that have been circulating endlessly within him, until they found a home in this song.
I bow down to pray
I try to make the worse seem better
His mind draws what his eyes have never seen; the nights Joo-hyun spent alone in their apartment, in her office, valiantly making the best of what she had and where she was. He thinks of never being able to play on a stage like this, never being able to write and make music for other people, and all the more he feels the pain of a dream not fulfilled, a dream she must have given up for dead. He thinks of his silence and absence once CNBLUE became public, how even he became a stranger to her after all this time away. How she was forced to fill in the blanks to questions growing in her own head, to think that they were no longer compatible or right for one another. That’s a lie, Joo-hyun, he sings fiercely without words, through his song. He sings, that as if by doing so, he can bring her back to him.
I’ve got a hundred million reasons to walk away
But baby, I just need one good one to stay
The song can’t last longer than a few minutes tops, but it feels so much longer and richer to Yong-hwa than the whole concert combined. The minute the last chord rings out, it’s almost as if someone has turned up the master volume in his head and everything starts layering back in: the screams of the crowd, the standing ovation he’s getting, the numbness in his fingers from playing so hard. When he tips his head back, he can’t even care that his cheeks are wet again. There is only one thought left: he needs to make things right with his wife, once and for all.
“Thank you.” He says, already moving, already unslinging his guitar. “Thank you.”
He expects to run into Sang-woo right after in the wings, braces himself for the verbal onslaught that is surely coming his way after all those stupid stunts he pulled onstage. But right now, there is only one thing he needs to do. Get to his phone, call his wife and talk the way they should have 14 days ago. He can only hope his silence, his inaction hasn’t inflamed the situation more than it already is.
And then, his eyes adjust to the dimness, and his feet skid to an automatic stop.
Because, there, silhouetted in the darkness is a slight figure he knows all too well. Dressed in a too large CNBLUE tour shirt and dark jeans, is Joo-hyun.
For a while, he just stares at her, because she isn’t actually here; it’s too dark backstage, he’s made her up in his head out of this overwhelming desire to have her here, he is dreaming, he knows he is -
And then both her hands are coming up to her face, pressing at her cheeks and when she exhales, it’s a queer breathless sound, the sound Joo-hyun only makes when she’s trying and failing to hold back tears. Yong-hwa isn’t thinking anymore when he closes the distance between the pair of them in a matter of heartbeats, pulling her to him.
Her body shakes against his, he can feel his tears coming down afresh against her hair, but there is also this overwhelming sense of peace at the heart of this storm. This is where I need to be, Yong-hwa thinks. With her. Nowhere else.
He feels her tuck her chin against his shoulder, and at the feel of her breath against his ear, he tightens his arms around her but she is the first to speak. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, opens his mouth, but she presses her face into the curve of his neck, effectively silencing him. “Please. Will you let me say this?”
Against his chest, he can feel her take in an unsteady breath. “I’m sorry, Yong-hwa. I shouldn’t… I should never have said what I said that night. Honestly… I never even… I didn’t even know that all these years, I’d held this resentment against you, or your mom. That I blamed you, for what had happened to me.”
He can feel her shake her head, fiercely against him. “That was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have made you think that - not even for one second.”
He can feel it, her fingers pressing tightly into his back, tensing but the words tumble from her. “I loved your mother. I never… I never had a mother growing up, so when I met your mom, it’s like… I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. I know it’s stupid, but it’s how I felt.” Her voice hitches, breaks. “When she got cancer, when she passed away… I just… it’s like a part of me died with her too.”
Yong-hwa shakes his head mutely against her, and now the pain in his heart doubles; not only for them, but for the loss of his mother, for the grief that both of them went through. How stupid, he thinks. All this time, I always thought I was the only one grieving, but so was Joo-hyun. We could have been there for each other. I should have been there more for her.
But she pulls him from this train of thought, tucking a hand against his cheek. Her eyelashes sparkle with the last of tears, in the dim light. “Look at me.”
He does.
“I dropped out of law school because you needed me. That is true.” She says, so soft, just above a whisper. “But I did it because I saw you struggling, and I wanted to be there for you. Because I loved you and that’s what you do for people you love. You’re there for them in the good times, but… more importantly, when they need you most.”
Her other free hand finds his, her fingers filling the gaps between his own, locking tight. “And if ever, I had to do this all again… it’s almost inconceivable. But I would have chosen the same thing. Because I love you, Jung Yong-hwa, and I always will.”
It’s too much.
He can’t even begin to describe how it feels to hear her say those words to him, words that he’d so desperately hoped for but had been so afraid that he would never hear again. He chokes, a final errant sob slipping out and he has to release a hand to scrub roughly at his face; he doesn’t even remember the last time he cried this hard, but this Seo Joo-hyun, his Joo-hyun, has always made him feel immeasurably more than he ever thought possible.
There is only one thing he could possibly say to something like that.
“I love you too, Joo-hyun,” He says raggedly, unfurling his fingers across her cheekbone in a whisper-light caress. “You know that, right?” He shakes his head. “You’ve heard that, right? Just now?”
The faintest of smiles breaks across Joo-hyun’s face, and she nods. Even though tears are still spilling down her cheeks and her nose is red, he thinks she’s never looked as beautiful as in this moment.
It’s his turn now.
“I’m sorry for what I said that night,” He tells her somberly. “I know… I know it’s not pretty, but it is a part of the truth. I won’t deny it, but it’s not the whole truth. I don’t want you to even believe for a second that I married you because I had to.”
“I think at the back of my head, I was always aware of the sacrifice that you were making for me.” He says quietly. “I knew just what you were giving up, and I think to a large extent, I just carried around this… this guilt for the way everything had unfolded, even though I knew… I knew that I couldn’t possibly have controlled any of it.”
“But Joo-hyun,” He says, letting the slightest of wry smiles slip. “I didn’t marry you because I thought it was the only way to make it up to you. I married you for so, so, so much more than that. I married you, because in the midst of everything - the grief, the depression - you were the only person who I wanted to let in. I married you because you were the person who’d walked beside me through all of it - from before CNBLUE, till the day we got signed and after that. I married you, because you were the only person in the world that I wanted to always be a part of my life.”
Tears are rolling down Joo-hyun’s cheeks; wordlessly, he thumbs them away.
“I got carried away along the way.” He admits. “This life… I wish I could have the music without the celebrity, but they… they come hand in hand. But I haven’t been around enough, haven’t been as supportive of you as I should have been, and I’m sorry for even making you think that there was no place for you in my life anymore.”
He takes another huge breath. “I hope that you see I’m as crazy about you, as the day you hopped into my car. I hope you see that there will always be a place for you in my life. I hope that you’ll stay.”
And there it is, finally. The right words. The only words. His heart laid out for her to see.
Joo-hyun closes her eyes, but there is the faintest of smiles is playing around her lips. She blinks rapidly, shakes her head, almost as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing, but when she finally turns back to him, he sees her nod through the darkness, firmly, once, then twice, acknowledging his words.
Even though he’s pretty sure that things between them have found a resolution of sorts, he still has to ask. “So,” He says, tentatively, “You’re not… you’re not divorcing me. Right?”
That really does startle laughter from her, a soft one, but her watery eyes are fond. She presses her lips together, fruitlessly so, since a bright smile is beginning to break across her face. “No.” She says with a firmness that makes his heart soar. “We’re not getting a divorce.”
+++
EPILOGUE
He tugs off the chunky headphones, bowing in thanks to the producer outside the booth. Beside him, Hyo-shin sunbae is doing the same, his eyes bright when he turns to Yong-hwa. “Fantastic.” He holds up his hand for a high-five, which Yong-hwa gladly returns. “I must say, when FNC asked us to collaborate, I had in mind a slow ballad, but I think this arrangement works out a lot better.”
Yong-hwa returns the smile easily - it’s been almost two weeks of working with Hyo-shin sunbae, but the glow of it hasn’t run out. Talk about a dream come true. “It’s been an honour, sunbae,” He starts to say, unless the formality gets batted away, reinforced by the exasperation on Hyo-shin’s face.
“The honour,” His senior says firmly. “Has been mine, Jung Yong-hwa. And if you won’t desist with the sunbae...”
He knows better than to let the older man fill in the end of that sentence with an actual threat, and so he raises both hands, a show of his acquiescence. Hyo-shin moves away, starts gathering up loose sheets of lyrics. “Are you headed back to Seoul now? It’s late.”
Yong-hwa looks over at the digital clock outside the studio. 2.17am. “Yeah.” He says, suddenly aware of how stiff his shoulders are, having been hunched over the microphone for hours, doing take after take of the rap, the chorus, the harmonies. I’ll stretch in the car. “I have to make it back to Seoul by tomorrow. Well, today.”
Hyo-shin’s eyebrows raise. “Something important?”
Yong-hwa nods. “It’s my wedding anniversary tomorrow,” He explains. “I’m… I’m planning on surprising my wife. I told her recording would take all week - which I thought it would - but since we wrapped early…”
He forgets for a moment, that Hyo-shin, like the rest of the world, knows, and so there is a brief moment of surprise, of being thrown off-balance, when his senior leans a hip against the studio stool, his eyes thoughtful. “Ah, your Joo-hyun.” Hyo-shin smiles, indulgently, wagging a finger at him. “When the story first broke, I thought, this kid’s got balls. To tell a story like that; that his wife is divorcing him in the middle of a concert…”
Yong-hwa flushes, even though the memory of it is barely 6 months old. The older man continues.
“But then, I read more about it in some article somewhere. And I could relate.” His senior’s eyes are distant for a moment there, obviously lost in some private memory. His lips pull up in a wry smile as he re-focuses on Yong-hwa. “This life isn’t an easy one. But it sounds as though you found someone worth holding on to.”
Yong-hwa nods. “I did.” He looks at the floor for a moment. “I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“I’ll need to hear the full story someday personally from you,” Hyo-shin declares, an easy grin overtaking his face. “Scratch that, we should meet for lunch one day, you, me and your Joo-hyun. Once the single drops.”
He promises to do so, and after a few more farewells to the studio crew, he is jogging out of the studio towards his car. The winter air nips at his face; his nose, his cheeks and he roots around in his jeans for the car key, pausing only to wipe away snow that has gathered on the windscreen. It is getting colder and colder each day, but the worst of winter hasn’t yet come upon them.
Once in the car, he sets the GPS for Seoul, sets his phone in its stand. This is one of the rare few times that he is alone in the car, driving himself, even though Hong-ki had offered to drive him. But Yong-hwa had declined, since it was just supposed to be a short trip.
A few weeks ago, FNC had asked him to collaborate with Hyo-shin on a single, and Yong-hwa had only been too happy to oblige. It was only after he accepted that he realized that recording was slated to take place over the week of his wedding anniversary. It was such a stupid, obvious mistake; the kind of mistake you look back on and wonder how it could ever have happened and Yong-hwa had felt nothing short of wretched about it.
But Joo-hyun had insisted that he go; that this was Park Hyo-shin, one of his idols, and he should take this opportunity. They could celebrate their anniversary the week after. The fact that she still understood, that she would still put his desires and dreams first, even after everything that had happened, amazed Yong-hwa.
And now that an opportunity like this has arisen; for him to make it back in time to Seoul for their anniversary - he’d be stupid not to take it.
He has just turned out of the carpark, when he pauses. It’s late, but Joo-hyun has kept later hours before. She might still be up.
He speed dials her, keeping a careful eye on the road even as he lets the phone ring. He’ll put down after five rings if she doesn’t pick up; she might be asleep and he doesn’t want to wake her either.
He doesn’t get that far; Joo-hyun picks up on the second ring, sounding alert despite the ungodly hour and the sound of her voice makes him smile. “Oppa.”
“Hey,” He says softly, even though it’s only him in the car. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
He can almost see her eye-roll, even as she huffs audibly down the line. “There’s just so much to do. I’ve got two presentations this week, and a paper due on Thursday that is barely ready…”
Yong-hwa shakes his head. “I swear,” He tells her fondly. “I feel like you were less busy when you were working.”
The concert was a turning point for their relationship, but it was only the start. They’d made up, and they knew they wanted to stay together, but it was clear that there were many unresolved issues in their lives, individually and as a couple. One of those was Joo-hyun’s work.
Joo-hyun had demurred, but Yong-hwa had been insistent, unbudging on the fact that Joo-hyun would quit Ba-run and go back to law school. It was clear that that going back to school, becoming a practicing lawyer was something that Joo-hyun still wanted badly. He didn’t want her to torment herself any longer by not doing it.
She’d hesitated at first, but the more they’d talked about it, she had admitted that another part of why she’d started working instead of going back to school once Yong-hwa had started out in FNC, was also out of fear. A fear that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up, that she was no longer as good as she had been when she was younger. In Yong-hwa’s opinion, it was a senseless fear - Joo-hyun had always been clever and quick, and the years had only served to sharpen that. But the fact that he’d gotten Joo-hyun to confess that fear was already half the battle won. He still worked with her on it; hearing her out, talking her through her doubts. So far, it seemed to be working - Joo-hyun was coping well with the rigour of school, even if she did complain about it.
Joo-hyun laughs, amusement clear in her tone. “I haven’t studied in years,” She reminds him. “My brain is rusty, and I’ve got tons to catch up on. And this time, I actually have to graduate. Walk across the stage with that degree. Pass the bar.”
Yong-hwa has heard this spiel many times in the past few months, and even though she can’t see him, he still shakes his head at her, disbelieving. “You’re fine, baby. I promise. I’m sure you’re giving all those twenty something undergrads a run for their money.”
“You have to say that; you’re my husband.” Joo-hyun says, and he can almost imagine the eye-roll she gives him on her end of the line. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence, oppa.” There is a brief pause on her end. “You sound like you’re in the car. Did you just finish recording?”
“Yup.” He says. He tries not to lie to Joo-hyun, ever, but he figures he can let this white lie slide, since it is for a good cause. “On the way back to the hotel now.” He signals, making a turn onto the expressway that will take him back to Seoul.
“How did it go? How’s Hyo-shin ssi?”
Another thing they’d talked about after the concert was his work. Yong-hwa had sat down and discussed it with the boys and FNC, before he brought it to her, because he knew what Joo-hyun would have said. He deliberately decided to slow down, to hold off on putting out CNBLUE’s third album. While he knew it was a shame to ruin the momentum that CNBLUE was building up, he also felt that it was the right thing to do. He needed the time and space to re-build his marriage, and there was just no room for a new album in all of that.
Beyond Joo-hyun though, he also had to admit that he was tired. It had been a whirlwind few years for him and the boys, relentlessly putting themselves out there. They had stellar results to show for it, but he couldn’t deny that it was wearing him down. He had needed this break - both for Joo-hyun and himself.
FNC had been less than pleased, but they were hardly going to say no to one of their headlining bands. Plus, it wasn’t exactly the first time they’d disapproved of his choices, and Yong-hwa figured there were worse things to live with than the vague displeasure of upper management.
With their third studio album placed firmly on a backburner, Yong-hwa had had more free time to spend with Joo-hyun, where he’d been able to support her as she transited from work back into life as a law student. The break was also surprisingly refreshing for him; for the first time in years, he was able to really give himself space and time to write songs, to polish up his guitar playing skills. He also wasn’t entirely idle; he happily picked up small side projects, like collaborating with other label mates, writing songs and composing arrangements. And while there was a part of him that was raring to get back into the whole touring cycle again, he was trying to listen to another side of him. A quieter side that urged him to enjoy this season. To learn. To listen. To grow.
Unsurprisingly, after the concert, he’d made headlines for three weeks consecutively, with the stories ranging from ludicrous to blatantly untrue (SHE’S LEAVING ME - CNBLUE’S YONG-HWA CONFESSES EXTRA-MARITAL AFFAIR). After lengthy discussion with Sang-woo and the FNC PR team, he’d put out a simple statement on social media, sharing the story without getting too much into details. He also wanted to let the fans know that everything had ended well for him - he owed them that much at least.
Videos and photos of that night were still circulated online though; something Yong-hwa still has difficulty looking at, the most heartbreaking being a shaky fan-video which zoomed in on him burying his face in Jong-hyun’s shoulder, obviously distraught. But the fans had rallied around him, just as they had that night. While some of them left behind nasty comments, saying that they were boycotting CNBLUE and him, the majority of them had promised that they would wait for the next album. And Yong-hwa was learning - learning to trust that the fans who really loved him, who really supported CNBLUE, would always be there, no matter how long it took. Trust.
“Hyo-shin’s good.” He says. “He wants to go out for lunch, when the single drops. He asked me to invite you.”
“Oh!” Joo-hyun sounds pleased; he can hear the smile in her voice. “I’d love to. I’ve been listening to his last album and you’re right, oppa - his voice. It’s so good.” There is a beat, before she continues, but this time her tone is teasing. “I can’t believe my husband is working with Park Hyo-shin on his new album, and he won’t even give me a sneak preview of any of the songs.”
“Not unless you want FNC to sue me, babe.” Yong-hwa says easily. He steps a little more on the accelerator; at this time, the highway is practically empty and he imagines the wheels of the car eating up the road. “Then we’d lose all our money… be living out on the streets, destitute, without a single thing in the world to call our own. Not exactly the kind of life you’d want.”
Joo-hyun is quiet for a little while. “But you could still play music.” She points out softly, none of the earlier teasing from their conversation in her voice now. “You’d busk in the day, and I’d get work somewhere… we’d get through it.” There is only an earnestness, a certainty that warms his heart. “Whatever it was, we’d get through it. Together.”
They don’t talk much about the near-divorce these days, but it isn’t out of a collective decision to not talk about it, nor is it out of a desire to avoid thinking about what was a painful part of their past. Yong-hwa has his own theory for this: it is just a part of their history that has no place in their lives right now. When his wife says things like that, alludes to that part of their lives - he remembers the pain, the confusion, the darkness, but he also knows so much more now. The faith that they can weather any storm that comes their way. The love that he has for her, whose roots run so deep within him, he can’t even begin to tell where they start and where they end.
Yong-hwa smiles.
“You’re right.” He agrees. He closes his eyes briefly, imagining her, imagining home. “We would.”