Next Flight
next flight
~6670, pg-13, (changmin/yoona)
Years later and she’s still playing the ‘Will we or won’t we?’ game with him.
It’s a fairytale gone wrong. Not because the prince never showed or the carriage never came, but because the story had very well been done and over with, or so she thought.
“Marry me”
It wasn’t a question, not that Yoona blames him. When was the last time she denied him anything anyway? Never, as far as she can remember.
-
The first sensible thing she should have done is to keep him out of her life, the second sensible thing she should do now is to say ‘no’. The problem is she has never been sensible when it comes to him.
You see, Yoona imagined this several times. The whole ‘Who will be the bridesmaids?’ game has been played one too many times for her to keep count. But years later and she’s still playing the ‘Will we or won’t we?’ game with him.
It must be over for real then, she thinks as she watches her suitcase being loaded into the trunk of a silver cab.
(Supposed they do end up together.)
-
It is madness.
A week ago she was sitting nervously in the front seat of Seung Gi’s car, fumbling over her words that she had string together in her head for a gentle but non-negotiable breakup speech. It was the fifth time in the past three years and she still can’t get it right. But he took it well, just as he always did.
Yoona wonders how well he’d take this piece of news when he catches wind of it.
A week later and she’s still sitting nervously in a car - a cab exactly, waiting for someone to come fetch her. So far, he is five minutes late but she’d take later than never at this point.
She drums her fingers along to the beat of the ticking seconds, close to losing count (and her nerve) when the door swings open.
“You came”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he murmurs dismissively, handing a couple of bills to the driver, “You’re leaving with me, that’s all I care about.”
-
Yoona follows him up two sets of stairs, the wood creaking with every second steps that they take. The building screams his name - from the simplistic set-ups to the old-fashioned edged of the reception lounge. No one would ever think to look for him here. Hell, if someone was to spot him walking around the halls with a name tagged pinned to his tee, they wouldn’t buy it for a second that they have Dong Bang Shin Ki’s Choi-Kang Changmin for a neighbor.
Although, she doubts he ever gets recognized these days. “A has been,” Taeyeon had called him that in an impromptus outburst during a drunken tryst. Despite it being factually true - he doesn’t sing, he doesn’t act, he is a ghost of a man; she had turned in early from that anniversary party.
The door cracks open with a ‘click’, waking her up from her incessant recalling of the past few years (those in which he had not taken part in). He doesn’t invite her in but expects her to show herself in, leaving her to do as she has done in the past fifteen minutes, trail behind.
Nothing.
There had been nothing in the room, except from a worn out mattress against the wall and a pile of books with a headphone and his glasses placed on top of it. There’s a small kitchen which looks to be untouched for the most parts with the exception of the running fridge and off to the side, a small closet that doesn’t look to have been purchased by him.
“D - do you live here?” Yoona sputters, unbelieving of her own eyes, “I mean, permanently?”
Changmin’s bent over on the floor, digging through an opened suitcase for something. “Yeah. Why else would I ask you to come here?”
She swallows, then asks, “How long have you been living in this place?”
“Since I was discharged”
“So around eight months now?”
Changmin nods, getting back up on his feet after successfully zipping up the bag. “Why do you look like that?”
She shakes her head. “Like what?”
“You’ve got that face on,” he motions at his own, pondering whether he should mimic it but gives up in the end, “That wide-eyed, slacked jaw, opened mouth look - the one that you do whenever I say or do something that either appall or impress you.”
In this case, both.
“I - uh…” Yoona’s got no words really, even after all this time he still manages to leave her floored, “I’ll just help you pack.”
-
Yoona’s not the type to snoop; not that there’s much snooping to do in his apartment. It just so happens that she finds what Changmin probably didn’t intend her to find.
If you think of it logically (and he prides himself of being the logical one out of them two), taking that whole pile of books he’s got next to his “bed” is an inconvenience. Yoona gathers all twelve of them into her arms, planning to dump them onto the kitchen counter so he can pick and choose which he wants to take when he comes back from the bathroom. She drops one of the older copies - frayed on the edge and pages turning yellow.
Changmin nor her were big on taking pictures with each other, even though they did take numerous of one another. This one polaroid is so faded that she can barely make out the backdrop.
Yoona picks it up along with the novel. On closer inspection, she was happy and he was younger - they weren’t standing together, in fact there was several people sitting between them at the dinner table. He’s got his head held up high, looking over heads and seeking for hers.
She bets he never thought they would eventually come to this.
-
Changmin doesn’t think to ask her that question until they’re standing in front of the departure timetable.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Yoona is half-way between wanting to slap him and hold his hand, but does neither. “I’m not sure but I don’t know where else I’m supposed to be.”
Even behind those thick sunglasses, she can tell he’s furrowing his brows. “You don’t sound like you’re a hundred percent convinced that this is a good idea, Yoona.”
She gapes at him. “Oh, trust me, I am a hundred percent convinced that is a bad idea.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m still asking myself that actually,” she turns to him, sighing heavily as she takes off her shades so he’d have to look her in the eyes, “I can’t believe I’m back to this after all these years.”
“And vice versa,” he mutters under his breath, “Do you want me to beg?”
Yoona shakes her head. “You didn’t beg me back then, Changmin, I don’t see why you’d beg me now.”
“I would if you ask me to,” he says evenly, removing his Raybans and leveling with her, “I’m serious about this. If we do this, there’s no going back but I sure as hell am going to fight you every step of the way if you turn back now.”
She appraises him for a long moment. Then, “Beg”
He doesn’t move and it makes her feel entirely too insecure for a woman her age. Crossing her arms over her chest protectively, she clears her throat to repeat herself, “Go ahead, get on your knees and beg.”
Nothing happens and Yoona knows she should have seen this coming, but she’s already compromised her pride so many time in the name of true love. She’s about to give up and look away when the plastic handle of his luggage makes a loud ‘clang’, dropping to the floor along side with his right knee.
“I’m begging you, Yoona, please leave with me.”
For once, he is giving her all the power. So why does she still feel so powerless?
-
It occurs to her that they haven’t spoken - properly spoken.
One moment she is lounging on her couch, pretending this is the day he is relieved of his duty and the next, he, in the flesh, is standing at her door. She thinks she must have said a ‘hello’, that’s all he allowed before he started doing all the talking (which wasn’t very much, considering it was only two words.)
“How was the army?” That’s all she’s got rehearsed on her walk from the coffee stand to the table.
“Fine,” Changmin says curtly, “How was dating and not dating Seung Gi, then dating him again?”
Yoona glares him as he mixes in two spoons of sugar, then passing the cup back to her.
“What?”
“Couldn’t you have asked about something else?” She cocks her head, “I don’t know…like maybe about all the acting I’ve done?”
“I watched everything, including the reruns when I was serving,” he replies without missing a beat, “I know exactly how much acting you’ve been doing while I was gone, Yoona.”
“Oh,” she blushes, “Right”
“It’s surreal,” Changmin laughs incredulously and her eyes snap up to meet his, curious as to what has prompted such a reaction, “You look…” he trails off, then reaches over to brush a thumb over her cheek, “You look exactly the same. You haven’t changed one bit.”
How could she, when she keeps holding onto the same damn thing?
“I have a question,” Yoona begins, clearing her throat and shifting her chair a little further away from his.
Reluctantly he retracts his hand but nods, giving her the go ahead to get some things off her chest.
“How did you know I wasn’t with Seung Gi anymore when you uh…you know,” she swallows, “Popped the question?”
Changmin stares at her quizzically. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” she echoes, stunned, “So what, you just took a shot in the dark and hoped that we were broken up?”
“I had a lot of time to think in the army, Yoona,” he explains, taking a sip of his coffee, “It was a long wait to ask you that one question. I don’t think I could have waited until you break up with him, again.”
Yoona thinks she would have felt angered upon hearing him shrug her relationship off so easily, but now all it leaves her with is questions - a whole list of them, all of which had been there since he went away and even now. She doesn’t blame him, she might have when it pained her most, but she can’t help but feel that Seung Gi and her might have stood a chance if Changmin said all that needed be - except he never did, there was always something under the surface waiting to be unveiled but he never let her have that.
“I did a lot of thinking myself while you were gone,” she says quietly, watching the steams coming from her cup, “I tried not to think about it, I know things never went anywhere between us. But I kept trying to figure out why we ended even before we start - it doesn’t seem fair, don’t you think?”
Changmin chuckles, it’s not bitter but it is sad. “I wonder about that a lot too.”
Finally, “Why did you never ask me out?”
“Why didn’t you?” he counters, but complies with a response when she huffs, “The timing never seemed right. I debut, you debut, I lost members, you lost a member, I went on indefinite hiatus, your group disbanded.”
It all sounds like such a joke.
“And the timing is right now?”
He shakes his head ruefully. “No, but we’ll make it right if we have to.”
Yoona can think of a hundred reasons why this would fail - it has every other time, so she doesn’t see how this time it should be any difference. But then Changmin looks at her; pure and honest and she can’t help but believe this might really be it for them.
Grimacing, she mutters tartly, “Very reassuring, Shim.”
-
It hits her a bit slow - in the ladies room, washing her hands and putting her hair up in a bun. Yoona’s twisting her mussed strands into a knot, when next to the sink, her phone vibrates.
She doesn’t look at the caller ID, she hangs up, turns her phone off and puts it away.
Something is always stopping her - last time it was an acting gig, before that it was his breaking up with Victoria being too soon for neither of them to make room for a possibility of something new, before that time it was the big comeback after Jessica’s departure.
Yoona stops herself from making mental list of everything she is leaving behind. She knows that if she starts, she won’t ever stop and they won’t ever make it out of this airport.
And she wants to - she wants them to make it.
-
She doesn’t mean to bring it up but she does. “We’ve never been on a date before.”
Changmin blinks, uncrossing his legs then crossing them again. “Yeah, we have.”
Her brows furrow. “No, we haven’t. That one random time with Yunho oppa and Boa unni doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Yoona sputters, wiping a sweaty hand on her jeans, “It obviously didn’t count as a date.”
Again, “Why not?”
“We didn’t do any of those coupley things, because we were never a couple,” she rambles, “That whole trip to the theme park, you only stuck to my side because you didn’t want to third wheel and you were too awkward to play wing man.”
Changmin scoffs, throwing an arm across the back of her chair. “I keep forgetting how naïve you were back then.”
She shoots him a doubtful look, urging him to go on and prove his claim.
“I held your hand the whole time we were in the haunted house - “
“I swear to god if you say it’s because I was scared.”
“Then I won you that stupid stuff toy that you were dying to take home and I could tell because you were doing that puppy eye thing - it was either going to be me or Yunho hyung, and he was too busy chatting up Boa noona,” Changmin rants like he didn’t hear a word that came out of her, “And if that still doesn’t say something to you, I walked you home even when I lived in the complete opposite direction and knew it would be an hour more to get back.”
Briefly, Yoona wonders if she knew back then too. He must have; that’s just the way he’s always been - he sees everything about her, especially things she is yet to discover about herself. Changmin’s always been one step ahead of her.
“Then why didn’t you ask me out that night?”
He catches her curious gaze just to turn away, as if it had been a slap in the face for her to ask him such thing. “Because with you, I wanted something that would last.”
Admittedly, Yoona too, hoped for a forever.
-
Changmin lays down a map of the world, on it are red and green crosses he’s made on top of cities and notes next to them. It dawns on Yoona that he must have been planning this for much longer than she had initially thought.
“First thing first,” he starts with a heavy sigh, “We can rule out China and Japan.”
“Why Japan?” Yoon pipes up, “You speak fluent Japanese and I’m passably good. The education there is fantastic -“
“Why are we talking about education?’
Blushing, Yoona mumbles, “For the kids…”
His eyes widen as he lets out an awkward cough, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “You’ve uh...made a good point there, but we’ll risk a high chance of being recognized the moment we land. I think it’s better if we go somewhere else for the first few years then we can move there later to settle.”
Desperately wanting to dissipate the tension that rose between them, Yoona blurts the first thing that comes to mind, “Why did you cross off Bejing?”
Changmin throws her an uncertain look. “You honestly don’t know?”
And then Yoona remembers, even when she thinks she’s finally forgotten. Some things you can push to the back of your mind but it will linger, haunting you for till your very last breath - this is one of them. She remembers feeling in control; convinced he is so within her reach that at any point she could reach out to take what is hers. How wrong she was.
“Oh right,” she shakes her head, dazed, “Of course.”
In a way, their love story has been one for the ages. It’s one of those ones people will look back with a mixed of melancholy but fondness; they should be able to recount every single details because all of them matters and when they are asked about it; they will say “Yes, it was beautiful but all beautiful thing comes to an end.” That’s not the case for them - they keep taking turns to make sure they can never be over. Bejing was a defining moment - Changmin could have easily gone back to Qian, he never did after that night and Yoona, she could have easily chosen to stay, she didn’t.
“That was the last time,” Changmin has to stop himself to take a breather, she knows this is as hard for him to talk about as it is on her conscience, “You never kissed me after that night.”
But she thought about it - in Europe, in Thailand, on the transit flights, on the flight back to Seoul.
Yoona wanted to give it a try - letting the idea of them go.
Honestly, she tells him, “I didn’t want to be in love with you anymore.”
-
Changmin disappears into a book store. Yoona knows it has more to do about needing space away from her and not so much about “buying the newspaper.”
When they were younger, Yoona would pester him to “Just talk to her, for god’s sake” because he “can’t keep everything bottled in.” She didn’t understand why they couldn’t “talk it out” like normal people (couples) would. It would take her years to realize that as a matter of fact, Changmin has nothing to say. He hears the frustration in her voice, the arguments she throws his way, the cry threatening to rip from her throat - that’s enough for him to surrender. He won’t say ‘sorry’ because he’s given up the fight to her, so he walks away to placate his ego.
There was a lot of things Yoona didn’t understand about Changmin when they were younger, including how scared he is of losing her.
-
Yoona meets Seung Gi at a very serendipitous time of her life. She was walking around the SBS building, trying to find the right room for her new drama’s first reading when she passes by him. He didn’t stop her, he just couldn’t get her out of his mind and so, he stops her the next time.
As faith would have it, this was a month after Changmin started dating Qian.
As luck would have it, this was all so convenient and she wanted convenient.
-
Changmin comes back with two hot chocolates and a bag of Malteesers. It reminds her of her trainee days, he would visit at late nights with the same offerings and they would sit on the floor board with a blanket thrown over their legs.
“We’re not going to talk about that anymore,” Changmin declares, firm and insistent, “We’re going to stop talking about the past and talk about the future. We’ve made mistakes - a lot of them, there’s nothing we can do but move pass it and focus on what really counts.”
Yoona nods in agreement, averting his gaze even if not consciously.
“Where do you want to go?”
He doesn’t have a map for her this time. She peers up at him, stunned as she says. “Is that a trick question?”
“No,” Changmin chuckles fondly as he ruffles her hair, “I did all this preparation for the sake of practicality but I don’t think it matters so much anymore. In the end, I don’t really care where I go if it’s with you.”
“Uh…but you’re a control freak!”
“I’m not that bad,” he rolls his eyes, popping a chocolate treat into his mouth, “Didn’t you say you’ve always wanted to do what did you call it again? Romantic getaway, that’s it. So you can pick where that happens.”
Yoona lets out a small laugh of exasperation. “You know what makes it more romantic? The way you phrase things.”
“Hey,” Changmin nudges her with his elbow, “At least I’m making an effort.”
Truth to be told, she doesn’t mind where they are because they are together now.
-
So this is what happens when you leave things for to long.
Changmin was weird about public display of affection - not a tension filled make out session in the middle of the play ground kind of PDA. By that, Yoona means holding hands or a simple peck on the cheek.
They must have worked him too hard for the army service, because now all he does is touch her - in some way or another. He puts his hand on top of hers when she opened the fridge to buy a bottle of water, he slings an arm around her shoulder when she’s flipping through any ‘Lonely Planet’ copy she can get her hands on, he’s got a hand on the small of her back when she’s rifling through her hand bag for hand cream. They are all familiar yet foreign touches; she welcomes them anyway.
“You’re being annoying,” she whines, pushing his face away as he leans over her shoulder to get a look of her passport picture, “Have you ever heard of personal space?”
Changmin hums, feigning contemplation. “Yeah, but I think I’ve had enough of that with you.”
Yoona is certain she is coloring a bright shade of red or beaming like a lovesick school girl, or both. It’s not everyday that she gets to hear this sort of dare she say, sweet things from him. And her smile would have only continue to widen until her jaw ache if he didn’t lean down to kiss her.
It’s barely a touch; only a fleeting brush of the lips that makes her stomach flutters. (Old habits really do die hard.)
“What was that for?” It comes out in a long, dreamy breath that makes fingers reach up to stop the trembling of her lower lip.
“Because I want to,” he says casually, leaning back with a triumphant grin that she misses (and adores), “And because for the first time, I don’t need to ask for permission.”
-
They’ve been going back and forth between two terminals for almost five hours now. It’s a silly question to ask (too late, too early - she’s not sure) and Yoona wouldn’t have gone through with it if she was not dozing off with her head on his lap.
“Changmin?”
He’s skimming through a pamphlet on Italy. “What?”
“Why did you propose to me this morning?” She asks quietly, the words dying down on the back of her throat, “You never bothered to call or message me once you got back from the army. Then out of the blue, you showed up at my door and expected me to run off with you so we can get married. You’re usually not reckless like this.”
Yoona can feel him shifting, possibly uncomfortably or intimidated by her interrogative inquiry. Still, she keeps her eyes shut and revels at the warmth of him. There’s only ever been two occasions where they have slept besides each other - the first time on his bed after the news hit that five was not forever and two will be the number now and the last, when they they were cramped into the backseat of the tour bus and he dozed off on her shoulder.
“I realized that’s what kept me from going after you. With every opportunity that came my way, all I ever did was make excuses - rationalizing why it was too soon, too wrong, too risky,” Changmin explains, every syllable punctured with pent up frustration, “We were bound to run out of chances. I’d gamble it all, knowing that I tried and not spend the rest of my years wondering if it could have been you.”
Yoona considers confiding in him that for everyday that he was away, she stirs awake at the crack of dawn, consumed by perturbation that it is most likely that he was the one, but not the one at the end of the aisle for her. She suspects that may be why whenever he’s not by her side, she feels the need to survey around and check he is close by. It is for the same reason why Changmin struggles to let her out of sight; fear. They are fearful that this too, will be another false alarm - another chapter of ‘could have been but never is.’
“It took you eight months,” she states a matter of factly, “Why is that?”
“After I got out of the army,” Changmin starts as he strokes her hair, “I realized how big you were in the business. I couldn’t even go to the grocery without seeing your face stamped on some bottle of pressed juice,” He chuckles dryly, “I don’t have much to lose - I’ve made enough to live comfortably without working and I don’t want to, not in the industry anyway. But you,” Yoona can sense the sorrow in his voice, his sudden tenseness at the mention of the ‘entertainment’ factory they were churned from,
“You’re at your peak. It made it that much harder to come knocking on your door.”
“Just a little side note, I’ve made enough to live more comfortably than you,” Yoona jokes, lightening the mood. Then slowly, Yoona rolls onto her back and smiles up at him, “It’s funny, you know. I waited a long time to debut, then I waited even longer to be a famous actress but the longest wait in my life is still you.”
Changmin strokes a thumb across her cheek, then playfully pinches it. “You don’t regret it, do you?”
“Not like I had a choice,” she mumbles begrudgingly, smacking his hand away.
(I would have kept on waiting until you came back to me.)
-
“If this is supposed be a dinner date, you’ve made it onto the list of the cheapest date I’ve ever been done,” Yoona comments sardonically as she stares down at the packaged cup of kimchi in between them, “Store bought kimchi and ramyun. You really know how to treat a girl, Shim.”
Changmin swallows down a mouthful of noodle and places his chopsticks down. “Please do tell. How many guys have you gone on a date with?”
“Five”
He stops the noisy sipping of the soup and turns to her in outrage. “You’re lying.”
“Lying?” She scoffs, “Yah! What are you trying to get at?”
“You’ve ever gone on dates with four guys,” Changmin says stubbornly, picking up some kimchi and piling them up on his side of the shared plate, “Me, Lee Seung Gi, Donghae that one time and that creepy guy in college that Yuri set you up with.”
Yoona puts a hand on her hip as she spells it out for him. “Kim Soohyun.”
She watches, smug as she chokes on the food. Coughing between the words but manages to let out a strangled, “What?!”
Yoona nods, feigning nonchalance. “We went on a couple of dates but our schedules were too busy for it to go any further than that.”
“You’re bluffing,” Changmin eyes her suspiciously, “I’ve never heard that from anyone before.”
“We met through a church group,” she says simply, “Someone sounds jealous to me.”
Grumpily, he motions at her half full cup of lukewarm food. “Just finish your dinner.”
They’re at the convenient store, standing next to a fogged up window as they eat two-dollar cup noodles along with a dollar side dish, bickering about nothing in particular. Yoona’s never been more satisfied.
-
He’s bickering about Barcelona, she’s fawning over Seattle and it would have never died down if not for a bustling group of high school students that are about to board their plane for an exchange program.
They were too wrapped in their own debate about the weather to notice three smaller and younger figures approaching.
“H - hi,” the girl with a thick fringe covering her eyes greets, “I’m a really big fan of yours, Yoona unni.
C - can I please have your a - autograph?”
Clearing his throat to mask his alarm, Changmin turns his back to them in a transparent attempt to conceal his own identity. As if on cue, Yoona steps in front of him and shoots a dazzling smile she has learnt can make people agreeable if she wishes them to be.
“Of course,” Yoona replies politely but sweetly, taking the piece of paper and pen from the girl’s shaking hands, “What’s your name?”
“Jooyeon,” she squeaks.
In a desperate measure to distract the students, Yoona resolves to feel chatty for the time being. “What school are you guys from?”
“Daegu,” another girl with the bob cut chirps, standing on her toes to get a glimpse of actress Im
Yoona’s mysterious companion.
“Noona,” a lanky boy calls her haughtily, “Who’s that guy that you were talking to?”
“Hmm…?” Yoona feigns ignorance, making quick work at signing her autograph on anything that is handed her way, “Ah, him?” She flashes her most charming smile as she points at Changmin fleetingly,
“He’s my manager.”
“Oh okay,” the boy nods but looks far from convinced, “He looks really familiar, don’t you think Suah?”
The short haired girl tries her best to get a peek and Changmin tries his best to blend into the tour group behind them.
“Yah, yah,” she tugs at her friend’s sleeve, “Jooyeon-ah, doesn’t that ahjusshi, remind you of that guy from Dong Bang Shin Ki?”
“You’re being really embarrassing right now,” the girl scolds in a hushed tone then turns to Yoona, grinning as she bows, “Thank you for the autographs. Have a good flight, please rest a lot. Fighting, unni!”
Yoona keeps the glossy smile plastered, waving her Miss Universe ‘goodbye’ as she bids them farewell and to never come back. The two girls carry on with their arguing, taking turns to elbow each other on their sides. She should have known the problem would lie with the boy - taking nosey glances over his shoulder, just buzzing to get a better look at her ‘manager’s face.
“They’re gone,” she leans over, whispering, “You can stop relax now.”
“Can I?” Changmin says with a grim little smile, “I think neither of us will be able to relax after this, yoona.”
-
True to his words, reality washes over them like an ice, cold bucket of water. What are they doing? Yoona doesn’t allow herself to form a response to that question - she doesn’t want to know exactly what it is they are doing or the consequences that will follow; Changmin is here - that’s all she needs to know.
Changmin is not much of a talker. He has his moods for banters and jokes, but he is not for aimless chats. He doesn’t do rambles or rants, but she can sense the silence is different this time. She shouldn’t but she is beginning to doubt that he is having doubts. (Because she doesn’t have any - none.)
The terminal is vacant, the last flight had taken off less than ten minutes ago. Yoona thinks absentmindedly that they should have boarded that one. They have spent hours - talking, arguing, making up and for what? Both of them knew they could have boarded any flight and be content with wherever it took them, as long as it’s not the ground they’re standing on.
“They’ll be here anytime now,” Changmin says honestly, his back against the railing and head hung
low.
Yoona stares out the window pensively, watching as the plane departs from Seoul and disappear into the sky, transforming into a barely there dot. From a distant, she can hear the rapid flipping of the letters as they turn into blank slates. She doesn’t dare glance at the board - that’s one less flight, one more wasted opening.
“What will you do when they get here?” She asks, more to herself and less to him.
Changmin hovers over her, hesitating to wrap his arms around her but eventually does reach around her waist and pulls her into his embrace. “I’ll be here.”
It sounds like a promise.
-
In a way, this has been a long time coming for them. It is almost humorous to Yoona that they never got caught before. How many times have they taken late night strolls? How many secret looks have they exchanged on stage? How many times did she whispers ‘I miss you’, ‘I love you, ‘I need you’ when the curtains are down but the show goes on? Why do those stolen moments come down to one single leap of faith?
Changmin tells her not to look down, she is sorry that she cannot take that advice. Yoona sees them, scratching at the doors and yelling for them with their cameras, the flashes blinding the security as they push them back but to no avail. They are out and they are hungry for blood - his or hers, she can’t tell which scoop they’d like more to get their hands on.
“Stop it,” He hisses, quiet but firm, “You’re going to drive yourself obsessing over them. There’s nothing we can do but wait for them to go away.”
Swiveling around, Yoona meets him square in the eyes - he is just as afraid of the unknown as she is. “And what if they don’t?”
Changmin may have been able to cut her down with that cold, hard look of his but she had done some growing up of her own while he was away in the force. She was meek and she was a feeble opponent, but love shouldn’t have to be this way. He can’t be the only one calling the shots - this is their life now, they’re not separate entities anymore.
“I don’t know,” he says resolutely, “I don’t know, Yoona. We either leave now, or we never will.”
“What if we don’t leave?”
Easy like that, it trickles her out of her. Her chest expands, her breathing evens, she feels lighter. So this is what has been stopping them all along - it had been her, again.
Changmin’s jaw tightens. “You said you wanted this.”
“I do,” she says without missing a beat, reaching out for his hand but he is already retreating, “I really do but we -“
“I - “ Changmin begins but pauses for a long, heart wrenching sigh, “I’m not angry at you,” he seethes through gritted teeth, clenching his eyes shut, “I can’t be angry at you. This is too sudden, I shouldn’t have rushed you into this. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not,” Yoona cuts him off with such fierceness that even she herself is taken aback, “I made a decision, Changmin. When you asked me to marry you, I said ‘yes’ without so much as a second thought. I know -“ she affirms earnestly, “I know it. I’ve always known it couldn’t be anyone else but you.”
“Then why?” He asks blankly, throwing his arms up in exasperation, “What are you waiting for?”
Yoona can’t answer him, instead she only says, “I love you.”
How ever many years later, two people who spend their lives settling for everyone but each other comes to an unnerving realization that yes, their suspicions had been true - they were never meant to be.
-
Yoona sits on the bench alone; the same one he shared with her hours ago.
She misses him already but she knows she can’t go back until she figures out why it feels so wrong to be with the only person that feels right for her.
-
The media finds a way to pass through the gate like she knew they would. Yoona knows she is just buying time now but still, she walks to the nearest souvenir store to purchase a cap and cheap sunglasses.
Yoona’s rifling through her wallet for some loose change when notices a sticker picture poking out of the fifty other cards she shoved in that one slot. It’s an identical one he had hidden between the pages of his mystery novel - at that restaurant, on the corner of his street. Mister Shim cited it as the ‘best place in the whole wide world’ when they he treated them to dinner there. It probably was a white lie but she doesn’t see it that way - Changmin was there, so was his family and their friends - Yoochun, Jaejoong, Jessica, Seohyun -
“Miss?”
She blinks up at the sales associate, then it dawns on her, “I don’t need those anymore.”
-
And surely enough, Changmin is exactly where she had left him.
“Nowhere”
Changmin stares at her, dumbfounded. She can’t tell if this confusion is due to his shock that she came back or her cryptic message.
“You asked me I could pick where our destination is,” Yoona goes on without giving him a chance to interrupt her with any more quizzical looks, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Yoona bolts across the room to where their suitcase lays, standing them up straight and dragging them over to where he is. She smiles up at him, confident to be this close to him again and to spend the rest of her life by his side like this.
“I want to go back to the playground behind your house,” she knows he doesn’t understand her yet but it really is this simple, “I want to go back to the theme park we went to for our first date. I want to walk along the same road that we almost got caught at but never did. I want to go to that hotpot place that we used to meet at eleven at night on the second Monday of every month. I want to go to to all those places, again, with you but this time, we won’t hide.”
Changmin gazes into her eyes, disbelieving but all consuming.
“We don’t have anything to hide,” Yoona tells him, laughing as she clasps their hands together, “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together and that’s not something we should have to hide.”
Finally, Changmin just shakes his head but there is visible grin that’s blooming on his face as he picks up up his luggage with his other hand. “You’ve lost your mind.”
Yoona takes a hold of the handle of her suitcase, giving his hand one last squeeze then says, “I’m thinking it’s for the better.”
They don’t think. They keep their palms locked tight, fingers intertwine and together, they are unafraid of what awaits them.
-
They’re watching from the forefront of gate one. The security guards won’t be able to contain them much longer, so they tell Changmin. Neither of them are listening, she wonders if the staff have figured that out by now.
Changmin is still holding her hands and she is still holding onto his. The reporters are screaming for more, the camera men will never be done getting their fills of couple pictures, the writers are on their phones but they don’t have enough details for a story, yet. It’s odd - there are only the two of them here separated from the hundred others by this thin piece of glass.
“How long should we tell them we’ve been together for?” Changmin asks.
“I don’t know,” she admits, “That’s the truth; that’s what we should tell them.”
Changmin tilts her chin up so she is facing him. “For someone who deals with the press for most of her life, you really don’t know much about handling them.”
He strokes the side of her face and she knows they’re going to make it through this in one piece.
“Marry me?”
Yoona can’t decide between laughing or crying, so she settles with, “Yes”
The door opens and for the first time, they are not walking away from one another but rather, together.
~6670, pg-13, (changmin/yoona)
Years later and she’s still playing the ‘Will we or won’t we?’ game with him.
It’s a fairytale gone wrong. Not because the prince never showed or the carriage never came, but because the story had very well been done and over with, or so she thought.
“Marry me”
It wasn’t a question, not that Yoona blames him. When was the last time she denied him anything anyway? Never, as far as she can remember.
-
The first sensible thing she should have done is to keep him out of her life, the second sensible thing she should do now is to say ‘no’. The problem is she has never been sensible when it comes to him.
You see, Yoona imagined this several times. The whole ‘Who will be the bridesmaids?’ game has been played one too many times for her to keep count. But years later and she’s still playing the ‘Will we or won’t we?’ game with him.
It must be over for real then, she thinks as she watches her suitcase being loaded into the trunk of a silver cab.
(Supposed they do end up together.)
-
It is madness.
A week ago she was sitting nervously in the front seat of Seung Gi’s car, fumbling over her words that she had string together in her head for a gentle but non-negotiable breakup speech. It was the fifth time in the past three years and she still can’t get it right. But he took it well, just as he always did.
Yoona wonders how well he’d take this piece of news when he catches wind of it.
A week later and she’s still sitting nervously in a car - a cab exactly, waiting for someone to come fetch her. So far, he is five minutes late but she’d take later than never at this point.
She drums her fingers along to the beat of the ticking seconds, close to losing count (and her nerve) when the door swings open.
“You came”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he murmurs dismissively, handing a couple of bills to the driver, “You’re leaving with me, that’s all I care about.”
-
Yoona follows him up two sets of stairs, the wood creaking with every second steps that they take. The building screams his name - from the simplistic set-ups to the old-fashioned edged of the reception lounge. No one would ever think to look for him here. Hell, if someone was to spot him walking around the halls with a name tagged pinned to his tee, they wouldn’t buy it for a second that they have Dong Bang Shin Ki’s Choi-Kang Changmin for a neighbor.
Although, she doubts he ever gets recognized these days. “A has been,” Taeyeon had called him that in an impromptus outburst during a drunken tryst. Despite it being factually true - he doesn’t sing, he doesn’t act, he is a ghost of a man; she had turned in early from that anniversary party.
The door cracks open with a ‘click’, waking her up from her incessant recalling of the past few years (those in which he had not taken part in). He doesn’t invite her in but expects her to show herself in, leaving her to do as she has done in the past fifteen minutes, trail behind.
Nothing.
There had been nothing in the room, except from a worn out mattress against the wall and a pile of books with a headphone and his glasses placed on top of it. There’s a small kitchen which looks to be untouched for the most parts with the exception of the running fridge and off to the side, a small closet that doesn’t look to have been purchased by him.
“D - do you live here?” Yoona sputters, unbelieving of her own eyes, “I mean, permanently?”
Changmin’s bent over on the floor, digging through an opened suitcase for something. “Yeah. Why else would I ask you to come here?”
She swallows, then asks, “How long have you been living in this place?”
“Since I was discharged”
“So around eight months now?”
Changmin nods, getting back up on his feet after successfully zipping up the bag. “Why do you look like that?”
She shakes her head. “Like what?”
“You’ve got that face on,” he motions at his own, pondering whether he should mimic it but gives up in the end, “That wide-eyed, slacked jaw, opened mouth look - the one that you do whenever I say or do something that either appall or impress you.”
In this case, both.
“I - uh…” Yoona’s got no words really, even after all this time he still manages to leave her floored, “I’ll just help you pack.”
-
Yoona’s not the type to snoop; not that there’s much snooping to do in his apartment. It just so happens that she finds what Changmin probably didn’t intend her to find.
If you think of it logically (and he prides himself of being the logical one out of them two), taking that whole pile of books he’s got next to his “bed” is an inconvenience. Yoona gathers all twelve of them into her arms, planning to dump them onto the kitchen counter so he can pick and choose which he wants to take when he comes back from the bathroom. She drops one of the older copies - frayed on the edge and pages turning yellow.
Changmin nor her were big on taking pictures with each other, even though they did take numerous of one another. This one polaroid is so faded that she can barely make out the backdrop.
Yoona picks it up along with the novel. On closer inspection, she was happy and he was younger - they weren’t standing together, in fact there was several people sitting between them at the dinner table. He’s got his head held up high, looking over heads and seeking for hers.
She bets he never thought they would eventually come to this.
-
Changmin doesn’t think to ask her that question until they’re standing in front of the departure timetable.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Yoona is half-way between wanting to slap him and hold his hand, but does neither. “I’m not sure but I don’t know where else I’m supposed to be.”
Even behind those thick sunglasses, she can tell he’s furrowing his brows. “You don’t sound like you’re a hundred percent convinced that this is a good idea, Yoona.”
She gapes at him. “Oh, trust me, I am a hundred percent convinced that is a bad idea.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m still asking myself that actually,” she turns to him, sighing heavily as she takes off her shades so he’d have to look her in the eyes, “I can’t believe I’m back to this after all these years.”
“And vice versa,” he mutters under his breath, “Do you want me to beg?”
Yoona shakes her head. “You didn’t beg me back then, Changmin, I don’t see why you’d beg me now.”
“I would if you ask me to,” he says evenly, removing his Raybans and leveling with her, “I’m serious about this. If we do this, there’s no going back but I sure as hell am going to fight you every step of the way if you turn back now.”
She appraises him for a long moment. Then, “Beg”
He doesn’t move and it makes her feel entirely too insecure for a woman her age. Crossing her arms over her chest protectively, she clears her throat to repeat herself, “Go ahead, get on your knees and beg.”
Nothing happens and Yoona knows she should have seen this coming, but she’s already compromised her pride so many time in the name of true love. She’s about to give up and look away when the plastic handle of his luggage makes a loud ‘clang’, dropping to the floor along side with his right knee.
“I’m begging you, Yoona, please leave with me.”
For once, he is giving her all the power. So why does she still feel so powerless?
-
It occurs to her that they haven’t spoken - properly spoken.
One moment she is lounging on her couch, pretending this is the day he is relieved of his duty and the next, he, in the flesh, is standing at her door. She thinks she must have said a ‘hello’, that’s all he allowed before he started doing all the talking (which wasn’t very much, considering it was only two words.)
“How was the army?” That’s all she’s got rehearsed on her walk from the coffee stand to the table.
“Fine,” Changmin says curtly, “How was dating and not dating Seung Gi, then dating him again?”
Yoona glares him as he mixes in two spoons of sugar, then passing the cup back to her.
“What?”
“Couldn’t you have asked about something else?” She cocks her head, “I don’t know…like maybe about all the acting I’ve done?”
“I watched everything, including the reruns when I was serving,” he replies without missing a beat, “I know exactly how much acting you’ve been doing while I was gone, Yoona.”
“Oh,” she blushes, “Right”
“It’s surreal,” Changmin laughs incredulously and her eyes snap up to meet his, curious as to what has prompted such a reaction, “You look…” he trails off, then reaches over to brush a thumb over her cheek, “You look exactly the same. You haven’t changed one bit.”
How could she, when she keeps holding onto the same damn thing?
“I have a question,” Yoona begins, clearing her throat and shifting her chair a little further away from his.
Reluctantly he retracts his hand but nods, giving her the go ahead to get some things off her chest.
“How did you know I wasn’t with Seung Gi anymore when you uh…you know,” she swallows, “Popped the question?”
Changmin stares at her quizzically. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” she echoes, stunned, “So what, you just took a shot in the dark and hoped that we were broken up?”
“I had a lot of time to think in the army, Yoona,” he explains, taking a sip of his coffee, “It was a long wait to ask you that one question. I don’t think I could have waited until you break up with him, again.”
Yoona thinks she would have felt angered upon hearing him shrug her relationship off so easily, but now all it leaves her with is questions - a whole list of them, all of which had been there since he went away and even now. She doesn’t blame him, she might have when it pained her most, but she can’t help but feel that Seung Gi and her might have stood a chance if Changmin said all that needed be - except he never did, there was always something under the surface waiting to be unveiled but he never let her have that.
“I did a lot of thinking myself while you were gone,” she says quietly, watching the steams coming from her cup, “I tried not to think about it, I know things never went anywhere between us. But I kept trying to figure out why we ended even before we start - it doesn’t seem fair, don’t you think?”
Changmin chuckles, it’s not bitter but it is sad. “I wonder about that a lot too.”
Finally, “Why did you never ask me out?”
“Why didn’t you?” he counters, but complies with a response when she huffs, “The timing never seemed right. I debut, you debut, I lost members, you lost a member, I went on indefinite hiatus, your group disbanded.”
It all sounds like such a joke.
“And the timing is right now?”
He shakes his head ruefully. “No, but we’ll make it right if we have to.”
Yoona can think of a hundred reasons why this would fail - it has every other time, so she doesn’t see how this time it should be any difference. But then Changmin looks at her; pure and honest and she can’t help but believe this might really be it for them.
Grimacing, she mutters tartly, “Very reassuring, Shim.”
-
It hits her a bit slow - in the ladies room, washing her hands and putting her hair up in a bun. Yoona’s twisting her mussed strands into a knot, when next to the sink, her phone vibrates.
She doesn’t look at the caller ID, she hangs up, turns her phone off and puts it away.
Something is always stopping her - last time it was an acting gig, before that it was his breaking up with Victoria being too soon for neither of them to make room for a possibility of something new, before that time it was the big comeback after Jessica’s departure.
Yoona stops herself from making mental list of everything she is leaving behind. She knows that if she starts, she won’t ever stop and they won’t ever make it out of this airport.
And she wants to - she wants them to make it.
-
She doesn’t mean to bring it up but she does. “We’ve never been on a date before.”
Changmin blinks, uncrossing his legs then crossing them again. “Yeah, we have.”
Her brows furrow. “No, we haven’t. That one random time with Yunho oppa and Boa unni doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Yoona sputters, wiping a sweaty hand on her jeans, “It obviously didn’t count as a date.”
Again, “Why not?”
“We didn’t do any of those coupley things, because we were never a couple,” she rambles, “That whole trip to the theme park, you only stuck to my side because you didn’t want to third wheel and you were too awkward to play wing man.”
Changmin scoffs, throwing an arm across the back of her chair. “I keep forgetting how naïve you were back then.”
She shoots him a doubtful look, urging him to go on and prove his claim.
“I held your hand the whole time we were in the haunted house - “
“I swear to god if you say it’s because I was scared.”
“Then I won you that stupid stuff toy that you were dying to take home and I could tell because you were doing that puppy eye thing - it was either going to be me or Yunho hyung, and he was too busy chatting up Boa noona,” Changmin rants like he didn’t hear a word that came out of her, “And if that still doesn’t say something to you, I walked you home even when I lived in the complete opposite direction and knew it would be an hour more to get back.”
Briefly, Yoona wonders if she knew back then too. He must have; that’s just the way he’s always been - he sees everything about her, especially things she is yet to discover about herself. Changmin’s always been one step ahead of her.
“Then why didn’t you ask me out that night?”
He catches her curious gaze just to turn away, as if it had been a slap in the face for her to ask him such thing. “Because with you, I wanted something that would last.”
Admittedly, Yoona too, hoped for a forever.
-
Changmin lays down a map of the world, on it are red and green crosses he’s made on top of cities and notes next to them. It dawns on Yoona that he must have been planning this for much longer than she had initially thought.
“First thing first,” he starts with a heavy sigh, “We can rule out China and Japan.”
“Why Japan?” Yoon pipes up, “You speak fluent Japanese and I’m passably good. The education there is fantastic -“
“Why are we talking about education?’
Blushing, Yoona mumbles, “For the kids…”
His eyes widen as he lets out an awkward cough, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “You’ve uh...made a good point there, but we’ll risk a high chance of being recognized the moment we land. I think it’s better if we go somewhere else for the first few years then we can move there later to settle.”
Desperately wanting to dissipate the tension that rose between them, Yoona blurts the first thing that comes to mind, “Why did you cross off Bejing?”
Changmin throws her an uncertain look. “You honestly don’t know?”
And then Yoona remembers, even when she thinks she’s finally forgotten. Some things you can push to the back of your mind but it will linger, haunting you for till your very last breath - this is one of them. She remembers feeling in control; convinced he is so within her reach that at any point she could reach out to take what is hers. How wrong she was.
“Oh right,” she shakes her head, dazed, “Of course.”
In a way, their love story has been one for the ages. It’s one of those ones people will look back with a mixed of melancholy but fondness; they should be able to recount every single details because all of them matters and when they are asked about it; they will say “Yes, it was beautiful but all beautiful thing comes to an end.” That’s not the case for them - they keep taking turns to make sure they can never be over. Bejing was a defining moment - Changmin could have easily gone back to Qian, he never did after that night and Yoona, she could have easily chosen to stay, she didn’t.
“That was the last time,” Changmin has to stop himself to take a breather, she knows this is as hard for him to talk about as it is on her conscience, “You never kissed me after that night.”
But she thought about it - in Europe, in Thailand, on the transit flights, on the flight back to Seoul.
Yoona wanted to give it a try - letting the idea of them go.
Honestly, she tells him, “I didn’t want to be in love with you anymore.”
-
Changmin disappears into a book store. Yoona knows it has more to do about needing space away from her and not so much about “buying the newspaper.”
When they were younger, Yoona would pester him to “Just talk to her, for god’s sake” because he “can’t keep everything bottled in.” She didn’t understand why they couldn’t “talk it out” like normal people (couples) would. It would take her years to realize that as a matter of fact, Changmin has nothing to say. He hears the frustration in her voice, the arguments she throws his way, the cry threatening to rip from her throat - that’s enough for him to surrender. He won’t say ‘sorry’ because he’s given up the fight to her, so he walks away to placate his ego.
There was a lot of things Yoona didn’t understand about Changmin when they were younger, including how scared he is of losing her.
-
Yoona meets Seung Gi at a very serendipitous time of her life. She was walking around the SBS building, trying to find the right room for her new drama’s first reading when she passes by him. He didn’t stop her, he just couldn’t get her out of his mind and so, he stops her the next time.
As faith would have it, this was a month after Changmin started dating Qian.
As luck would have it, this was all so convenient and she wanted convenient.
-
Changmin comes back with two hot chocolates and a bag of Malteesers. It reminds her of her trainee days, he would visit at late nights with the same offerings and they would sit on the floor board with a blanket thrown over their legs.
“We’re not going to talk about that anymore,” Changmin declares, firm and insistent, “We’re going to stop talking about the past and talk about the future. We’ve made mistakes - a lot of them, there’s nothing we can do but move pass it and focus on what really counts.”
Yoona nods in agreement, averting his gaze even if not consciously.
“Where do you want to go?”
He doesn’t have a map for her this time. She peers up at him, stunned as she says. “Is that a trick question?”
“No,” Changmin chuckles fondly as he ruffles her hair, “I did all this preparation for the sake of practicality but I don’t think it matters so much anymore. In the end, I don’t really care where I go if it’s with you.”
“Uh…but you’re a control freak!”
“I’m not that bad,” he rolls his eyes, popping a chocolate treat into his mouth, “Didn’t you say you’ve always wanted to do what did you call it again? Romantic getaway, that’s it. So you can pick where that happens.”
Yoona lets out a small laugh of exasperation. “You know what makes it more romantic? The way you phrase things.”
“Hey,” Changmin nudges her with his elbow, “At least I’m making an effort.”
Truth to be told, she doesn’t mind where they are because they are together now.
-
So this is what happens when you leave things for to long.
Changmin was weird about public display of affection - not a tension filled make out session in the middle of the play ground kind of PDA. By that, Yoona means holding hands or a simple peck on the cheek.
They must have worked him too hard for the army service, because now all he does is touch her - in some way or another. He puts his hand on top of hers when she opened the fridge to buy a bottle of water, he slings an arm around her shoulder when she’s flipping through any ‘Lonely Planet’ copy she can get her hands on, he’s got a hand on the small of her back when she’s rifling through her hand bag for hand cream. They are all familiar yet foreign touches; she welcomes them anyway.
“You’re being annoying,” she whines, pushing his face away as he leans over her shoulder to get a look of her passport picture, “Have you ever heard of personal space?”
Changmin hums, feigning contemplation. “Yeah, but I think I’ve had enough of that with you.”
Yoona is certain she is coloring a bright shade of red or beaming like a lovesick school girl, or both. It’s not everyday that she gets to hear this sort of dare she say, sweet things from him. And her smile would have only continue to widen until her jaw ache if he didn’t lean down to kiss her.
It’s barely a touch; only a fleeting brush of the lips that makes her stomach flutters. (Old habits really do die hard.)
“What was that for?” It comes out in a long, dreamy breath that makes fingers reach up to stop the trembling of her lower lip.
“Because I want to,” he says casually, leaning back with a triumphant grin that she misses (and adores), “And because for the first time, I don’t need to ask for permission.”
-
They’ve been going back and forth between two terminals for almost five hours now. It’s a silly question to ask (too late, too early - she’s not sure) and Yoona wouldn’t have gone through with it if she was not dozing off with her head on his lap.
“Changmin?”
He’s skimming through a pamphlet on Italy. “What?”
“Why did you propose to me this morning?” She asks quietly, the words dying down on the back of her throat, “You never bothered to call or message me once you got back from the army. Then out of the blue, you showed up at my door and expected me to run off with you so we can get married. You’re usually not reckless like this.”
Yoona can feel him shifting, possibly uncomfortably or intimidated by her interrogative inquiry. Still, she keeps her eyes shut and revels at the warmth of him. There’s only ever been two occasions where they have slept besides each other - the first time on his bed after the news hit that five was not forever and two will be the number now and the last, when they they were cramped into the backseat of the tour bus and he dozed off on her shoulder.
“I realized that’s what kept me from going after you. With every opportunity that came my way, all I ever did was make excuses - rationalizing why it was too soon, too wrong, too risky,” Changmin explains, every syllable punctured with pent up frustration, “We were bound to run out of chances. I’d gamble it all, knowing that I tried and not spend the rest of my years wondering if it could have been you.”
Yoona considers confiding in him that for everyday that he was away, she stirs awake at the crack of dawn, consumed by perturbation that it is most likely that he was the one, but not the one at the end of the aisle for her. She suspects that may be why whenever he’s not by her side, she feels the need to survey around and check he is close by. It is for the same reason why Changmin struggles to let her out of sight; fear. They are fearful that this too, will be another false alarm - another chapter of ‘could have been but never is.’
“It took you eight months,” she states a matter of factly, “Why is that?”
“After I got out of the army,” Changmin starts as he strokes her hair, “I realized how big you were in the business. I couldn’t even go to the grocery without seeing your face stamped on some bottle of pressed juice,” He chuckles dryly, “I don’t have much to lose - I’ve made enough to live comfortably without working and I don’t want to, not in the industry anyway. But you,” Yoona can sense the sorrow in his voice, his sudden tenseness at the mention of the ‘entertainment’ factory they were churned from,
“You’re at your peak. It made it that much harder to come knocking on your door.”
“Just a little side note, I’ve made enough to live more comfortably than you,” Yoona jokes, lightening the mood. Then slowly, Yoona rolls onto her back and smiles up at him, “It’s funny, you know. I waited a long time to debut, then I waited even longer to be a famous actress but the longest wait in my life is still you.”
Changmin strokes a thumb across her cheek, then playfully pinches it. “You don’t regret it, do you?”
“Not like I had a choice,” she mumbles begrudgingly, smacking his hand away.
(I would have kept on waiting until you came back to me.)
-
“If this is supposed be a dinner date, you’ve made it onto the list of the cheapest date I’ve ever been done,” Yoona comments sardonically as she stares down at the packaged cup of kimchi in between them, “Store bought kimchi and ramyun. You really know how to treat a girl, Shim.”
Changmin swallows down a mouthful of noodle and places his chopsticks down. “Please do tell. How many guys have you gone on a date with?”
“Five”
He stops the noisy sipping of the soup and turns to her in outrage. “You’re lying.”
“Lying?” She scoffs, “Yah! What are you trying to get at?”
“You’ve ever gone on dates with four guys,” Changmin says stubbornly, picking up some kimchi and piling them up on his side of the shared plate, “Me, Lee Seung Gi, Donghae that one time and that creepy guy in college that Yuri set you up with.”
Yoona puts a hand on her hip as she spells it out for him. “Kim Soohyun.”
She watches, smug as she chokes on the food. Coughing between the words but manages to let out a strangled, “What?!”
Yoona nods, feigning nonchalance. “We went on a couple of dates but our schedules were too busy for it to go any further than that.”
“You’re bluffing,” Changmin eyes her suspiciously, “I’ve never heard that from anyone before.”
“We met through a church group,” she says simply, “Someone sounds jealous to me.”
Grumpily, he motions at her half full cup of lukewarm food. “Just finish your dinner.”
They’re at the convenient store, standing next to a fogged up window as they eat two-dollar cup noodles along with a dollar side dish, bickering about nothing in particular. Yoona’s never been more satisfied.
-
He’s bickering about Barcelona, she’s fawning over Seattle and it would have never died down if not for a bustling group of high school students that are about to board their plane for an exchange program.
They were too wrapped in their own debate about the weather to notice three smaller and younger figures approaching.
“H - hi,” the girl with a thick fringe covering her eyes greets, “I’m a really big fan of yours, Yoona unni.
C - can I please have your a - autograph?”
Clearing his throat to mask his alarm, Changmin turns his back to them in a transparent attempt to conceal his own identity. As if on cue, Yoona steps in front of him and shoots a dazzling smile she has learnt can make people agreeable if she wishes them to be.
“Of course,” Yoona replies politely but sweetly, taking the piece of paper and pen from the girl’s shaking hands, “What’s your name?”
“Jooyeon,” she squeaks.
In a desperate measure to distract the students, Yoona resolves to feel chatty for the time being. “What school are you guys from?”
“Daegu,” another girl with the bob cut chirps, standing on her toes to get a glimpse of actress Im
Yoona’s mysterious companion.
“Noona,” a lanky boy calls her haughtily, “Who’s that guy that you were talking to?”
“Hmm…?” Yoona feigns ignorance, making quick work at signing her autograph on anything that is handed her way, “Ah, him?” She flashes her most charming smile as she points at Changmin fleetingly,
“He’s my manager.”
“Oh okay,” the boy nods but looks far from convinced, “He looks really familiar, don’t you think Suah?”
The short haired girl tries her best to get a peek and Changmin tries his best to blend into the tour group behind them.
“Yah, yah,” she tugs at her friend’s sleeve, “Jooyeon-ah, doesn’t that ahjusshi, remind you of that guy from Dong Bang Shin Ki?”
“You’re being really embarrassing right now,” the girl scolds in a hushed tone then turns to Yoona, grinning as she bows, “Thank you for the autographs. Have a good flight, please rest a lot. Fighting, unni!”
Yoona keeps the glossy smile plastered, waving her Miss Universe ‘goodbye’ as she bids them farewell and to never come back. The two girls carry on with their arguing, taking turns to elbow each other on their sides. She should have known the problem would lie with the boy - taking nosey glances over his shoulder, just buzzing to get a better look at her ‘manager’s face.
“They’re gone,” she leans over, whispering, “You can stop relax now.”
“Can I?” Changmin says with a grim little smile, “I think neither of us will be able to relax after this, yoona.”
-
True to his words, reality washes over them like an ice, cold bucket of water. What are they doing? Yoona doesn’t allow herself to form a response to that question - she doesn’t want to know exactly what it is they are doing or the consequences that will follow; Changmin is here - that’s all she needs to know.
Changmin is not much of a talker. He has his moods for banters and jokes, but he is not for aimless chats. He doesn’t do rambles or rants, but she can sense the silence is different this time. She shouldn’t but she is beginning to doubt that he is having doubts. (Because she doesn’t have any - none.)
The terminal is vacant, the last flight had taken off less than ten minutes ago. Yoona thinks absentmindedly that they should have boarded that one. They have spent hours - talking, arguing, making up and for what? Both of them knew they could have boarded any flight and be content with wherever it took them, as long as it’s not the ground they’re standing on.
“They’ll be here anytime now,” Changmin says honestly, his back against the railing and head hung
low.
Yoona stares out the window pensively, watching as the plane departs from Seoul and disappear into the sky, transforming into a barely there dot. From a distant, she can hear the rapid flipping of the letters as they turn into blank slates. She doesn’t dare glance at the board - that’s one less flight, one more wasted opening.
“What will you do when they get here?” She asks, more to herself and less to him.
Changmin hovers over her, hesitating to wrap his arms around her but eventually does reach around her waist and pulls her into his embrace. “I’ll be here.”
It sounds like a promise.
-
In a way, this has been a long time coming for them. It is almost humorous to Yoona that they never got caught before. How many times have they taken late night strolls? How many secret looks have they exchanged on stage? How many times did she whispers ‘I miss you’, ‘I love you, ‘I need you’ when the curtains are down but the show goes on? Why do those stolen moments come down to one single leap of faith?
Changmin tells her not to look down, she is sorry that she cannot take that advice. Yoona sees them, scratching at the doors and yelling for them with their cameras, the flashes blinding the security as they push them back but to no avail. They are out and they are hungry for blood - his or hers, she can’t tell which scoop they’d like more to get their hands on.
“Stop it,” He hisses, quiet but firm, “You’re going to drive yourself obsessing over them. There’s nothing we can do but wait for them to go away.”
Swiveling around, Yoona meets him square in the eyes - he is just as afraid of the unknown as she is. “And what if they don’t?”
Changmin may have been able to cut her down with that cold, hard look of his but she had done some growing up of her own while he was away in the force. She was meek and she was a feeble opponent, but love shouldn’t have to be this way. He can’t be the only one calling the shots - this is their life now, they’re not separate entities anymore.
“I don’t know,” he says resolutely, “I don’t know, Yoona. We either leave now, or we never will.”
“What if we don’t leave?”
Easy like that, it trickles her out of her. Her chest expands, her breathing evens, she feels lighter. So this is what has been stopping them all along - it had been her, again.
Changmin’s jaw tightens. “You said you wanted this.”
“I do,” she says without missing a beat, reaching out for his hand but he is already retreating, “I really do but we -“
“I - “ Changmin begins but pauses for a long, heart wrenching sigh, “I’m not angry at you,” he seethes through gritted teeth, clenching his eyes shut, “I can’t be angry at you. This is too sudden, I shouldn’t have rushed you into this. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not,” Yoona cuts him off with such fierceness that even she herself is taken aback, “I made a decision, Changmin. When you asked me to marry you, I said ‘yes’ without so much as a second thought. I know -“ she affirms earnestly, “I know it. I’ve always known it couldn’t be anyone else but you.”
“Then why?” He asks blankly, throwing his arms up in exasperation, “What are you waiting for?”
Yoona can’t answer him, instead she only says, “I love you.”
How ever many years later, two people who spend their lives settling for everyone but each other comes to an unnerving realization that yes, their suspicions had been true - they were never meant to be.
-
Yoona sits on the bench alone; the same one he shared with her hours ago.
She misses him already but she knows she can’t go back until she figures out why it feels so wrong to be with the only person that feels right for her.
-
The media finds a way to pass through the gate like she knew they would. Yoona knows she is just buying time now but still, she walks to the nearest souvenir store to purchase a cap and cheap sunglasses.
Yoona’s rifling through her wallet for some loose change when notices a sticker picture poking out of the fifty other cards she shoved in that one slot. It’s an identical one he had hidden between the pages of his mystery novel - at that restaurant, on the corner of his street. Mister Shim cited it as the ‘best place in the whole wide world’ when they he treated them to dinner there. It probably was a white lie but she doesn’t see it that way - Changmin was there, so was his family and their friends - Yoochun, Jaejoong, Jessica, Seohyun -
“Miss?”
She blinks up at the sales associate, then it dawns on her, “I don’t need those anymore.”
-
And surely enough, Changmin is exactly where she had left him.
“Nowhere”
Changmin stares at her, dumbfounded. She can’t tell if this confusion is due to his shock that she came back or her cryptic message.
“You asked me I could pick where our destination is,” Yoona goes on without giving him a chance to interrupt her with any more quizzical looks, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Yoona bolts across the room to where their suitcase lays, standing them up straight and dragging them over to where he is. She smiles up at him, confident to be this close to him again and to spend the rest of her life by his side like this.
“I want to go back to the playground behind your house,” she knows he doesn’t understand her yet but it really is this simple, “I want to go back to the theme park we went to for our first date. I want to walk along the same road that we almost got caught at but never did. I want to go to that hotpot place that we used to meet at eleven at night on the second Monday of every month. I want to go to to all those places, again, with you but this time, we won’t hide.”
Changmin gazes into her eyes, disbelieving but all consuming.
“We don’t have anything to hide,” Yoona tells him, laughing as she clasps their hands together, “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together and that’s not something we should have to hide.”
Finally, Changmin just shakes his head but there is visible grin that’s blooming on his face as he picks up up his luggage with his other hand. “You’ve lost your mind.”
Yoona takes a hold of the handle of her suitcase, giving his hand one last squeeze then says, “I’m thinking it’s for the better.”
They don’t think. They keep their palms locked tight, fingers intertwine and together, they are unafraid of what awaits them.
-
They’re watching from the forefront of gate one. The security guards won’t be able to contain them much longer, so they tell Changmin. Neither of them are listening, she wonders if the staff have figured that out by now.
Changmin is still holding her hands and she is still holding onto his. The reporters are screaming for more, the camera men will never be done getting their fills of couple pictures, the writers are on their phones but they don’t have enough details for a story, yet. It’s odd - there are only the two of them here separated from the hundred others by this thin piece of glass.
“How long should we tell them we’ve been together for?” Changmin asks.
“I don’t know,” she admits, “That’s the truth; that’s what we should tell them.”
Changmin tilts her chin up so she is facing him. “For someone who deals with the press for most of her life, you really don’t know much about handling them.”
He strokes the side of her face and she knows they’re going to make it through this in one piece.
“Marry me?”
Yoona can’t decide between laughing or crying, so she settles with, “Yes”
The door opens and for the first time, they are not walking away from one another but rather, together.