In Constant Stars
14 -- t o  r e v e r t

Jongup ended up running in a bit later than planned, but the moment Zelo and I came in, he was amongst the crowd of friends ambushing Zelo for his birthday. Despite the fact that I’d been convinced that he knew what we’d been planning to do all along during dinner, my little brother still stared at me with big, surprised eyes when he realised what was happening. I didn’t get the chance to laugh at his flabbergasted look, because soon he was surrounded by his classmates. I noted with a grin that most of them were girls, some of them looking just a bit too happy that I suspected the feelings they harboured for him weren’t just of friendship.

Two arms came from my right to embrace me and I looked down at my smiling best friend. Her hair was tied in a fishtail braid she’d done while waiting for our arrival after she’d finished eating.

“Good for you he didn’t suspect anything,” she said cheerily as she leaned her head down on my shoulder.

“Good for us, you mean,” I corrected her sternly, because we’d done this together. “Also, don’t lean on me when you’ve got that paint smeared on your cheek.”

She’d drawn little heart-shaped balloons on both her cheeks. I didn’t understand why, but at least the orange and pink on her face were happy, bright colours. She grinned, which only slightly deformed one balloon on her right cheek because of her unilateral dimple, before slipping away to smear paint on someone else’s shoulder.

I watched our décor. Heeyoung had done an awesome job making the gym look presentable with Yongguk and Youngjae. Despite the fact that all of our decorations had been cheap and bought last minute at a ratty costume shop, I thought they still looked nice in the strobe lights of our installations.

Zelo was still being engulfed by his classmates. I leaned back against a wall with a grin watching him accept gifts, a lingering, surprised look still on his face. His messy blonde hair shone occasionally when the lights would shoot past them. And though his shirt said ‘I hate everyone’ (he bought it when he was going through his rebellion phase), his expressions that moment said that he did anything but. Jongup threw an arm around his shoulder with pride at the success of the party.

A cup of soda was handed to me and I looked up to find Yongguk smiling down at me.

“Good job.”

I raised my plastic cup to touch his as a joke, saying all the while: “You too. Everything here looks awesome. You’ve worked hard.”

He humbly raised his shoulders as if to say he had nothing to do with it. He could tell I didn’t believe him for even a second.

Yongguk had always been a big brother figure to Zelo. So much, to the point, that I’d often wondered if Zelo sometimes saw him as a father figure too, since our actual father was all too lacking. Yongguk had a thing about him that always made you feel safe, like he was watching you and knew to catch you when you fell down.

Somewhere along the line, I’d become trapped in that feeling of safety and comfort too. As we worked together to throw a great surprise party, I came to realise the ease of trusting someone like Yongguk. It was easy talking to him, and he always listened and remembered. Having pressure lifted off your shoulders by him felt like being able to let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding in.

In the background played a generic pop song that Daehyun had hastily added to a playlist on his iPod. No one was dancing just yet; most people were still stuck in the buzz of seeing each other outside of school and congratulating Zelo. Unwrapped presents were starting to pile up on the table he stood next to, as he gratefully accepted one gift after the other.

“What’d you give him?” I asked Yongguk after softly nudging him.

He immediately pointed with his index finger of the hand holding his drink to a pair of headphones sitting at the edge of the table. “The vendor said I could personalise it, so I got his name painted on both sides in graffiti-style,” he said. “Though I hope he’ll be more careful with it than he is with most of his earphones. They never last any longer than a month, I reckon. What did you give him? Or haven’t you given him yet?”

“Nah, I’ll give it to him when we get home. It’s a new skateboard, since his old one is a bit worn off at some spots. I figured I could keep that gift some kind of tradition between the two of us.”

He grinned. “Like how Heeyoung keeps giving him snapbacks every year?”

I laughed and nodded. That was a tradition too. Some things would just never change.

“You guys are boooooooring,” sounded a voice between the two of us all of a sudden. Kim Himchan’s face popped up and he looked at us both with an eyebrow raised, clearly questioning why Yongguk and I were standing still at our spot. By then he should’ve already figured out that neither of us was the type to dance, but still he insisted that someone had to get the party started and he sure wasn’t going to do it alone.

“Why don’t you get Youngjae to?” I groaned. “He’s been acting like he’s high all night.”

We looked at our subject in case and – as I’d guessed – he was jumping up and down while talking the ears off of Daehyun, which was kind of rare because usually the roles would be reversed. Even Himchan winced a bit at the hyperactivity and we turned back to our conversation before Youngjae could notice us staring and get ideas that we’d welcome his rapid chattering.

“It’s either the RedBulls he downed or someone spiked the drinks,” Yongguk muttered before taking a sip himself, albeit more hesitantly and with careful glances at his own beverage.

“So, about dancing?” Himchan asked again, hopefully. This time his question was more directed towards me, since he probably realised too that Yongguk was anything but interested. His hand reached out to tug at my sleeve. By then it was already pretty much decided that I would dance and I had no choice.

Yongguk took my drink again as I rolled my eyes and got dragged away by his best friend. We danced to awful yet catchy pop songs as Himchan made weird expressions to me on purpose. On an occasion or two I even laughed. Soon Heeyoung appeared out of nowhere too and joined us, pulling a cute-looking guy I recognised from our school along. Himchan signalled to her that he would have her back, but she laughed it away and he just shrugged and focused on me again.

By this point Daehyun and Youngjae’s conversation had digressed to a one-sided monologue on the latter’s side. Daehyun, being the type to love talking much himself, looked like he was only seconds away from stabbing his eyes out with a fork, so I decided to help him out a bit. I pointed Himchan to a pretty girl behind him who was dancing on her own, and I wasn't surprised that he didn't mind accompanying her at all.

“Youngjae,” I called as I approached the table with the snacks. I figured being able to eat something was the only thing keeping Daehyun sane at this point. “Zelo’s swarm of fan-girls has backed down a bit, so maybe you can give him your present now?”

His eyes widened at my suggestion, his gaze switching between Zelo and me, Zelo and me. I rolled my eyes, all the while thinking that this kid was going to have a massive sugar crash in a while, and lightly pushed him in my brother's direction. His best friend and I shared a similar grin as he practically hopped away.

Then, slowly, Daehyun's smile faded away until he was wearing that neutral expression that he had on a lot whenever I was around. Slightly bitterly, he said: "So now you'll talk to me, huh?"

And here I was thinking he hadn't noticed me avoiding him.

"It wasn't really like I ignored you," I said, as detachedly as I could.

"But it wasn't like you weren't avoiding me either."

Well, he kind of had a point.

"Listen, Nana, I'm actually trying to reach out my hands and be friends with you here. I don't like how we started off, and I'm thinking you don't either. And even so it's fine if you don't want to be friends, but then I'd much rather that you'd tell me so straight to my face than having me chase you down for a no."

He said it almost like it was news, but truth was that I'd already realised this on several occasions. That time of us sitting on the bench outside of our school had been no fluke; neither was the fact that he'd done exactly what I'd told him to do when someone needed to pick up Zelo's cake. Even I knew that Jung Daehyun was making effort to get along with me, and the more I thought about that, the more I felt like I was getting myself entangled into something horrendously complicated.

But I would’ve been lying if I said I wasn’t curious how things could turn out.

“Don’t you think it might make things worse if we, you know,” I fiddled uneasily with my hands, not sure what to do with them, “become friends?”

He considered my words as he reached out for his drink on the table. He was wearing a neat button-up shirt and I was a little surprised. Daehyun did usually go for a pretty clean look, but never anything too fancy. Perhaps he was wearing it especially for Zelo’s birthday.

“Honestly?” Daehyun said to me after a little while, all the same time looking at me like he expected me to respond to him sarcastically in every mocking and painful way there was. When he finally realised I wouldn’t, he continued seriously: “It’ll make things harder, yes. But worse? Not necessarily.”

“How will it not?” I asked immediately.

He leaned back. We both faced the same way towards the mixed crowd of people dancing or just standing around and talking like we did.

“I don’t think us antagonising each other for petty reasons is going to be of help at all. Like, I mean, we could keep this feud up, sure, but what help is it to either of us? I don’t want to make Jinae upset and you don’t want to waste energy and time over fighting with me, do you?”

I wanted to tell him that Jinae would be upset eventually either way, but I kept quiet just for the sake of temporary moment of peace.

I supposed he was aware that I was very hesitant. He probably had no idea why. And honestly, I would’ve accepted his offer long ago if I didn’t just have this feeling. This feeling about him and Jinae. Something I probably wasn’t supposed to know, but I just knew.

“I’m going to get Zelo’s cake. Just think about it, okay?” he left soon after patting me lightly on my shoulder like I was his buddy already.

When Heeyoung came to grab something to eat at the table too, she asked me if Daehyun and I had made up and I could only shrug, because the line between being okay with each other and fighting with each other was very blurry whenever it came to him and me. Perhaps we were fine that moment, but who knew if we’d be at each other’s throats again within a few minutes?

Daehyun probably had no clue that I was slowly starting to understand what was going on between him and Jinae. And I didn’t like it for one bit.

“Nana?” someone nudged me in my side, kind of painfully too.

I rubbed the sore spot as I looked at Himchan questioningly and with the best irritated look I could muster. Even though the thing with Daehyun had been… bad for my mood, I found it hard to have a bad time nonetheless. When surrounded with people having fun and getting me to join as well, there was no defence mechanism I could be prepared with to say no.

Himchan said softly: “I don’t know where Zelo is right now, but now is the right moment to get the cake here and surprise him when he’s back.”

“Oh,” I muttered. Daehyun had gone off a while ago, and in the time that he’d been gone he could’ve easily fetched that same cake and brought it back at least five times or so. Somewhere along the line he got distracted. I told Himchan so, who made a clucking noise with his tongue.

“How about this? You get the cake and I’ll go look for Zelo?”

We parted in opposite directions as Himchan headed immediately for the toilets and I went to the kitchen in the building. Though it was a gym, there was still a small room remotely resembling a kitchen. It had the cupboards, a sink and even a fridge. From the dark hallways I saw the door leading towards it being open and light shone upon the dark walls. As I approached it, I recognised two familiar voices.

“ – really lucky.”

“I know, I know. But I feel awful knowing that she overworked herself partly because of me just for this party.”

“She just wanted for it to be perfect, we all did. Nana just had a bit too much on her plate, but she’s taking things slowly now, right?”

It surprised me that Daehyun was actually speaking up for me. Since when did he even pay attention to what I did, anyway?

“... We fought last time at Heeyoung noona’s place.”

“’We?’ You and Nana?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s uncommon for Nana to get into a fight with anyone, so I can’t say I’m surprised...”

If I hadn’t been curious as to what Zelo was about to say, I might’ve stomped out and punched Daehyun square in the face. But in that moment I was too focused on what Zelo might say to let Daehyun’s words settle in.

“This time it was different though...” Zelo sighed and started rubbing his temples like I’d often seen our mother do the past months. Zelo had always taken after Mum in a lot of things, even though he didn’t know. “I did the yelling this time and noona looked like she was about to burst out crying.”

Realising that neither of them had seen me yet, I hid a bit farther away from the door, behind the wall, leaning my back to it. I didn’t want for Zelo to realize that I was listening in on this conversation. I didn’t want for him to know that I knew. I didn’t want to ruin this evening for him.

“In truth there was even more I wanted to tell her, but she looked so hurt that I just couldn’t. She’s been around, supporting me so much the past few months that I think I’ve become selfish. So selfish that it’s become easy to accept her kindness and to hurt her in return. She’s been doing so much for me, but she doesn’t realize that I need her to sit down with me so that we can just talk.”

In the shadows created by the light of the lamps from the kitchen, I saw Daehyun’s shadow arm reach out, his hand softly patting Zelo’s shoulder. I sunk lower until I sat on the ground, not caring whether it was clean or not.

Zelo continued. “Every time I tried talking to her about our Dad, she just turned so silent and I could tell she didn’t want to discuss any matters concerning him or our Mum. It was shoo’ed away and I felt like I was suffocating each dinner when she’d cook and try to act like nothing ever happened, like our Dad didn’t just up and leave. She didn’t realize I didn’t want her to work her off, I just wanted to talk to her and be able to share our feelings.”

It was silent for a while. The sight of Daehyun’s hand resting on Zelo’s shoulder protectively made me anxious, so I hid my face in my arms. In the background I could still hear the loud music from the party, but after hearing this conversation, the sounds seemed emptier and faded away.

“… I think you should say the words you just spoke to me, to your sister. I think – no, I know she’ll understand.”

Zelo didn’t respond. I think it was mostly because, amongst the three of us there, the only one who seemed convinced that I would understand was Daehyun. And Zelo was right. I didn’t understand. How could I understand that Zelo wanted to address our father’s departure so badly? He was a matter from the past, someone we should move on from as he hadn’t proven himself as a proper parent the past two years. We didn’t need him. We’d be fine on our own. He was just wasting our time and our emotions.

“Anyway, don’t stay out here too long, okay? It’s your party, man! I actually had to spend two entire hours alone with Himchan to get things right during preparations.”

Zelo chuckled. The sound of Daehyun’s footsteps resounded, until they stopped and I felt his presence in front of me. When I lifted up my head from my arms, I found him looking at me and Zelo’s back, back and forth, with an incredulous expression on his face. I got up, patted the dust away from my jeans and signed to him that we should get back to the party.

Instead of listening to me, Daehyun grabbed my arm and softly pulled me away. First I thought that he wanted to guide me back inside, but to my surprise he led us past the gym, where the party was going on.

“How much of that did you hear?” he asked when he let go of me and we found ourselves at the front door, no other soul in sight.

“Enough.”

Somehow I expected for him to tell me something along the lines of, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, don’t worry’, which would be a lie. But then again, I’d seen him lie often enough, despite not knowing him well, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did. But he didn’t say anything.

There was something about the silence that loomed over us as we stood there. It was the kind of silence that caused for me to fidget and tremble and bite my lips in discomfort. Daehyun wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking down at me while I could only stare at the gravel beneath our feet. He was willing me to talk, because he knew I wouldn’t walk away after what I’d just witnessed. As it turned out, his will was stronger than mine. He forced me into this word-vomit that made me cringe afterwards.

“I don’t talk to him about our father. Partly because I dislike the idea in general, but mostly because he isn’t worth talking about. He didn’t talk to us or acknowledge us for more than a year before he suddenly left, you know? Just ignored us altogether. He ruined Zelo’s sixteenth birthday by staying out the entire evening. The three of us stayed home the whole time to wait until he’d be back home, and then he strolled in at three AM. Just like that. Didn’t acknowledge us when he saw that we were all awake.”

I took a deep breath in to calm myself, but it didn’t help at all. This was the point where I should’ve stopped talking at all, but I kept going. The feelings were overflowing and I didn’t know where to leave them. Or what to do with them at all.

“He wasn’t a good father… Even before he stopped acknowledging us, he wasn’t good. He was so… restricting. Like he didn’t want you to escape from his grasp. He made us feel like we were trapped in his world where his priorities were above our own… Junhong more so than me. What is there even to say about that?” I looked up to Daehyun, almost feeling like maybe he would understand. Maybe he knew why Zelo wanted to talk about our father. “Why would Junhong, of all people, want to go back to that?”

“He doesn’t want to go back there, Nana,” Daehyun said silently. “He just wants to talk about it.”

It was almost like he was telling me to find a better excuse, but the problem was that I didn’t have any other excuse than the truth. And the truth was ugly. The truth was this.

“I’m scared that I’ll become like my Dad and that talking about him will make Junhong see that too,” I stated. And then Daehyun’s eyes widened a little and I knew mine did too, because we were both surprised that I admitted this out loud. We’d brushed past this topic before, and Daehyun had probably already had his guesses, but I’d never laid it out as clearly as this. I’d never taken on as vulnerable a position as I did that moment.

I wasn’t crying, but I was trembling. It was all very unlike me. I couldn’t figure out how I could’ve so easily let down my guard. I wasn’t one for being exposed and fragile. I’d always been convinced that I was a strong girl, and with reason. I just didn’t understand why I suddenly broke down like that, never mind in front of Jung Daehyun.

Daehyun reached out the same right arm he’d used to reach out to Zelo before. Using a gentleness I hadn’t expected from him, he steered my head into the crook of his neck, patting the back of my head with his right hand softly. With this one-armed hug, he communicated that he knew my pain, that he understood and that he wasn’t going to smooth talk anything. He knew I wasn’t looking for a crushing hug, because I needed that distance. Yet I also needed someone’s shoulder to lean on, and Daehyun happened to be there, no matter how frustrating it was that it just had to be him.

In that moment, it was like I had no other option anymore when it came to him. There was no way that he and I would still be each other’s antagonists after that evening anymore. As exposed as I was, and as caring as he was, all at the same time, we just couldn’t.

And while we stood at the front door as the others were going all out at the party, I wondered why, exactly, Daehyun’s presence made me feel better than it should have.