In Constant Stars
27 -- p r o p e r  c o n v e r s a t i o n s

When I woke up the next morning, I saw that Heeyoung had somehow managed to kick off all of her blankets and continued sleeping without anything covering her but her short dress, even though it was winter. Her sleeping habits weren’t too good to begin with, so I wasn’t surprised. She was also an occasional insomniac, though most of the times it was due to her own tendencies to stay up late rather than the fact that sleep wouldn’t come to her. I hesitated on covering her back up again with the blankets because I didn’t want to wake her up, but I still ended up doing it anyway. Her slow, steady breathing never faltered as I did so.

Old habits die hard, just like Heeyoung’s sleeping habits and just like mine. I didn’t ever wake up any later than eight o’clock, which would probably never change, whether it was a day off or not. Yet again I thought of my father as I realised this and for once, I didn’t wave the thought of him off. I didn’t know why.

I’d find myself thinking about him more often lately. Just the smallest things would remind me of him, even though I’d felt like I hadn’t known him at all for the past few years. Occasionally he seemed like a ghost in my memories, possibly a figment of my imagination, only for this image to be shaken up completely again when I saw a trigger that would make me understand that he was very much real.

There was a lot I wanted to ask him. Why had he tried to talk to Zelo but not me? Then again, maybe I didn’t give him much of a chance talking to me. But it couldn’t have been that easy getting Zelo to open up to him again, so why had he not tried to use the same tactic on me? Too much was a mystery, yet at the same time it seemed so tiring to figure out the answers. The fact that suddenly the things I wanted to say to him had shifted from angry outbursts to simple questions was not something that had registered with me by this point.

When I got to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast at 7:56, I had expected to be earlier than the boys, but I was surprised to find Daehyun already standing at the coffee machine. It was as if he’d sensed my presence, because he immediately looked up when I neared the breakfast buffet. A faint smile played at his lips, though it didn't fully reach his eyes.

“Mornin’.”

He always said that, without fail. I didn’t recall ever hearing him utter a normal good morning to me. It was always the casual Mornin’.

“Good morning. Can I have a coffee too? Just black.”

He nodded quietly and pressed the top button after retrieving his own cup.

In one way or another I should have seen the silence coming, along with its awkwardness. We’d both crossed our borders last night, after all. Standing near him, still a lot farther than I had last night, made me feel embarrassed inside.

He looked back at me the moment I looked up at him, only for us both to avert our eyes immediately. I imagined that we both had wanted to take another look at each other then, but in reality I didn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to.

“I’m sitting over there. Will you join me?” he asked, pointing towards a small table next to the big windows of the restaurant.

Usually it would be a given that we would be eating together. After all, we’d been doing that for lunch at school for weeks now. But the circumstances were different and somehow, it also felt like we ourselves were different. Being apart from Seoul and everything and everyone we knew there gave me a boost of excitement, even though a part of me still knew that whatever happened here could only be temporary. Back in Seoul, Jinae had given up on Daehyun, the way I would never be able to do. Back in Seoul, I couldn’t afford to like Daehyun.

I approached his table with a full plate hesitantly. He’d patiently waited for me to join him. The only thing he’d already had a taste of was his coffee; his plate was still left untouched. Feeling uncannily shy, I sat down without looking at him. It was only when I picked up my chopsticks that I allowed myself to take a quick peek at him.

Daehyun was wearing a loose, black sweater. He seemed paler than usual in it. After everything, I still wasn’t used to seeing him in everyday wear, even though we’d already spent so much time after school hanging out. Seeing him in anything other than our school uniform was always a little odd, but in a good way.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked with a smile. He was holding his chopsticks, but it was as though he was waiting for me to eat first.

I nodded with a tired smile that probably convinced him otherwise. I’d woken up with bags under my eyes. Of course I hadn’t been able to sleep properly after last night.

Carefully, I asked: “You?”

He pursed his lips playfully and I didn’t know if that meant a yes or a no, but I realised that he probably wouldn’t elaborate on his vague answer. He quickly said: “It’s funny, y’know. I kind of figured that if there was someone out of all of us who’d be up as early as I was, it’d be you.”

Despite myself, I found myself smiling slightly. “You mean you’ve also been cursed with an inbuilt alarm clock?”

“Naah, I just wake up easily as long as I set an alarm. I’m not quite that level of weird just yet,” he joked lightly.

“I take offense to that.”

“Good. It wouldn’t be a proper conversation between the two of us if I didn’t manage to mess around with you at least a little bit.”

For some reason hearing that made me swallow thickly. I looked up at him through my eyelashes and, without thinking, I asked: “Then did we have a proper conversation last night?”

Almost instantly I regretted asking a bold question such as this one. With any other person, I could’ve played this off easily and convinced them that I wasn’t referring to the moment when we were on the rooftop and he held my hand. Even though they might not believe me, I knew that they’d let it go. But it was Daehyun who I was talking to, and he understood me far better than I wanted him to. It was without a doubt clear to him to which part of the evening I was referring.

He seemed as surprised by my bold question as I was. He mumbled: “I eh…”

Truth be told, I’d never heard him mumble that way, not even with Jinae. But then he seemed to realise again what exactly did happen last night and I could sense his change of mood. A frown appeared upon his handsome complexion and I suppressed the urge to reach out and touch the spot between his brows to make him stop.

He didn’t look at me as he said: “I don’t know. Does being rejected count as a normal conversational topic between two people?”

I bit my bottom lip. I saw the direction of his eyes flicker to my lips for a moment as I did this, but otherwise he didn’t seem willing to break his angry glare.

“Maybe not if there was anything to reject to begin with,” I said softly as I set down my chopsticks, “but it’s just us, Daehyun. Just you and me.”

I didn’t dare look him in the eye for fear that I might give in then. I didn’t want to give in. I didn’t want to be that girl, the one who snatched a guy just out of a relationship. Moreover, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, was I? Whatever Daehyun was trying to imply, I didn’t want it. I’d already resolved that I would deal with my one-sided feelings.

Well. Then it turned out they might not be one-sided. That did kind of change things.

So I found myself in a dangerous limbo between reaching out for what I desperately craved and backing off from what I knew I couldn’t have. In many ways it was unethical for me to be with Daehyun. Plus, I couldn’t keep up with him. Whilst I’d thought he’d been very difficult to speak with a few weeks ago, suddenly he became the warm boy I knew he was, but any moment that could change again.

But he kept sending out these signals. The burning contact, the intensifying of my yearning to stay close to him, the moments he’d reach out for my hand and he’d just touch it without having an actual reason to. He just simply did that. It was slowly becoming so clear what these things meant, but I was terrified of what might happen if I gave in.

Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me in this way I couldn’t really describe. He was very careful to do it in the moments he thought I was looking away, but he was never really quick enough to avert his eyes when I’d look back at him. He snuck those glances in the tiniest of moments; just before dropping a sugar cube in his coffee or when he’d stretch out his arms above his head. And it was those moments, too, that made me feel hopeful and fearful all at the same time.

It’s hard to explain this feeling of knowing that you want something, yet at the same time knowing that you shouldn’t. Perhaps I was making it into a bigger deal than it really was, but in my heart it really did feel like a war was going on in there between thought and feeling, and I had no idea which side I wanted to pick.

“Hey guys,” it sounded to my right. The tension ruling over our table was thankfully disturbed by Heeyoung, who took a seat next to me and stole a bite from my fried eggs. While munching, she asked: “Isn’t it too early for one of your arguments?”

“I’m surprised that you’re up this early in the morning after downing so many glasses of champagne last night,” I pointed out without missing a beat, all the while taking back my chopsticks and not letting her near my food again. She didn’t need to know that the argument Daehyun and I had just had was on a different level from our usual bickering.

“Himchan dragged me out,” Heeyoung said. She pointedly turned her head to glare at the back of the guy in question, who was already out flirting with one of the girls working as a waitress at the hotel’s restaurant. Then, with a bright smile, she turned back to us and said: “Hey, what do you guys think of celebrating Christmas together? The eight of us, at Himchan’s suite? It’s on the top floor because he’s got the family privileges and all. But it’s pretty big and it would be perfect for a little Christmas Eve get-together.”

Daehyun, who’d stayed uncharacteristically silent all this while, nodded and said: “Good idea. I kind of expected us to celebrate it together, actually.”

“Of course you did,” Heeyoung answered with a knowing smile. She pointedly shot me a look.

I resisted the urge to smack her for her tactlessness. Instead, I gobbled up the remainder of my breakfast and excused myself. I hoped I didn’t look like I was running away when I left the breakfast hall, but judging by Heeyoung’s weird looks, I supposed I didn’t really succeed.

I spent the day shopping, as there wasn’t really much else to do in Incheon. It was mostly a commercial centre, after all, and sightseeing on my own seemed lonely and unlikely with the cold weather. I did ask Heeyoung along, but she said that she had a date with this guy she’d met last night.

Not that I really minded being alone for a little while. I hadn’t been able to relax for a while and shopping was something I hadn’t done in a long while. Perhaps I didn’t have much to spend, as most of my money went into my savings account for college, but I could afford to let loose once in a while. Plus, Zelo joined me for lunch and went along in the afternoon.

“Hey Zelo,” I had said almost mindlessly as I picked through a rack of dresses, “what do you think Dad is doing?”

He looked at me weirdly when I asked this. I supposed it was a little odd that I just asked it so casually, but I thought that it was important that we’d finally break the silence about our father. Zelo had said that my mother and I were never open to discussing him, like Dad was a taboo. I supposed in a sense he was; after all, he’d left us. I had the ever existing fear of becoming exactly like him. There was so much pain. But if I had to choose between talking about him to Zelo or not talking to Zelo at all, then it was obviously the first, so I did.

“Well, he quit his old job so I suppose he probably spends his days doing nothing,” he said after a while. “I mean, I never did understand what he was doing as an office worker. He didn’t seem like he liked it.”

“You could tell that he didn’t like it?” I asked, surprised by this.

“Well, he never talked about it, did he? Mum blabs off whenever you get her started on her job.”

“But then again, that’s Mum,” I said drily.

He smiled at this and nodded in agreement. I looked back down at the rack of clothes and my eye quickly fell on a white dress. It was a summer dress, much too revealing for this weather, but I thought it looked cute. I picked it up and inspected it closely. The price wasn’t all too bad either.

“Come with me,” I said to my brother as I stalked to the changing rooms. As I changed and he waited outside, I continued: “Dad always seemed so neutral whenever he talked about his work, so I couldn’t really tell whether he liked it or not. But… he doesn’t seem like he’d stop working for good, does he?”

“Guess you’re right,” Zelo sounded from the other side of the curtain to the changing room I was in. “Maybe that’s why he took our college funds? So he can invest it somewhere or set up some kind of business?”

I stopped my movements as I thought about this. I never really wondered about what he’d done with the money and what he wanted to use it for. Moreover, it had been odd to begin with that he never said anything about taking the money. For as long as I could remember, that fund was meant for Zelo and me. It wasn’t really a problem now, since I did have a scholarship and the rest of the college fees that wouldn’t be covered, I could pay for myself…

“We won’t know unless he tells us himself,” I muttered. That meant that it would probably stay a mystery forever. With worry I thought about Zelo and his future. How about when he’d go to college? What if we wouldn’t be getting the money back before then?

“Yeah, about that… There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Zelo muttered from the other side of the curtain. After this followed a long silence, so when curiosity got the better of me, I pushed the blue curtain aside and looked at him with expectation. He returned my look with one of utter solemnity. “You know how Dad wasn’t really subtle, like, ever? So I asked him something last time after you caught me and you know… got angry and stuff…”

I rolled my eyes. “The point, Zelo?”

“I think… I’m getting this feeling that Dad might be coming back soon.”

“So?” Heeyoung asked as she dropped onto her bed. “What’s made you all frowny and pissed?”

I grumbled and I knew she wouldn’t be able to tell what I was saying.

Instead of questioning me, she stared at the shopping bags in my hands and then sighed. “It’s so like you to be chagrined even after buying a gorgeous dress like that. Let me guess, your crappy mood has something to do with your Dad?”

I looked up in surprise. “How could you tell?”

“Well, it had to be either your Dad or Daehyun who did something wrong. And since you’re doing your damned hardest to avoid the latter, it had to be the former. You’re easy to read, Nana. Always have been,” she said, her lips forming an easy grin. “So, tell me what happened.”

And because it’s Heeyoung, I did. I told her what Zelo had relayed to me that afternoon, about his phone calls with Dad and how those had changed over time. He told me that Dad had originally shot down all of the questions that my brother would ask him, but as time passed, it seemed like he started answering a few. Though often vaguely, he seemed to be more willing to respond. He also said things like ‘All in due time’. Hearing this did make me wonder when that ‘due time’ would be, really. With our Dad, you’d never really know.

“Well,” Heeyoung said, her index finger lightly tapping her cheek as if she were deep in thought, “I’ve always thought that your Dad would return the money before you’d actually start college, Nana.”

This was news to me. Heeyoung didn’t make it a point to voice her thoughts about my Dad aloud. Like Zelo had said, it was a taboo topic to talk about, after all. Perhaps that was why she never really said anything about the whole situation. Maybe she was also scared of intruding in matters that she thought weren’t hers to stick her nose in. I shot her a questioning look.

“Think about it, Nana. Your Dad might have been really cold and distant and all that, but I never thought of him as a bad person. Taking that money forever is kind of stealing, isn’t it? Even if it was his money to begin with, he’d promised it to you. Do you think your Dad would do that, stealing?” When I didn’t answer, she continued: “I think that’s the same for how he disappeared. I don’t think he ever meant for his disappearance to last forever. He probably wanted to come back as soon as possible himself. He never seemed like that kind of irresponsible person to me.”

Nor had he seemed that way to me. Yet, somehow the idea that he might be standing in front of me again sometime soon was a concept I found hard to grasp. How would I react? What would he say? How would he take responsibility for his actions? Would he properly apologize to Mum?

I’d probably sat in silence on my bed for a long while, all the while contemplating all the possible scenarios of what could happen if my Dad suddenly showed up on our doorstep again someday. It was like him not to announce it beforehand, after all. I didn’t notice Heeyoung’s eyes on me until she cleared .

“But that shouldn’t be your biggest worry right now, should it? You don’t know when he’ll show up again anyway, so there’s no point breaking your pretty head over it,” she said in a reasonable voice. “If I were you, I’d worry more about Daehyun. My goodness, that aura around the two of you this morning was not good, not good at all!”

“Eugh.” I let myself drop onto my own bed and hid my face in the comfortable pillows provided by the hotel. I’d rather suffocate than have to relive that awkward breakfast conversation with Daehyun.

Acting like I wasn’t behaving like a Neanderthal, Heeyoung kept going: “I mean, there is a betting pool going on, you know? Youngjae and I both know that the two of you will get together within the week, so why don’t you and Daehyun just kiss and make up already?”

I lifted up my head so I wouldn’t be completely muffled by all the feathery softness. “A betting pool? What?”

“Yup. Himchan’s in as well, amongst others, so you know there is a lot of money and pride involved here, Nana.”

I glared at her. “I thought you were supposed to be my friend? And here you are making bets about my life.”

She waved it off. “I know you’re not angry anyway, so don’t even try to pretend that you are. I’ll treat you to a nice dinner, alright? If you make my bet come true, that is.”

“I’m pretty sure making deals like this is against the rules of betting pools.”

“Aah, yes, but when did I ever care about those?” Heeyoung asked with a devilish smirk.

I closed my eyes and wished that Heeyoung would just go to bed already. Maybe then I’d finally have some peace and quiet. This day had brought along enough excitement already.

I heard her sigh and get up from her bed. Her feet padded softly against the hotel carpet until they came at a halt four footsteps from her bed. Before I knew it, I heard the soft strums of her guitar, the rustling of paper and the erratic, nervous clicks of her pen. She was back to writing a song.

Heeyoung was a person with many sides to her, and this was one of the most important ones. When she was busy with her music, she became a completely different person. Her carefree take on everything would suddenly become sullen seriousness. She didn’t pay attention to her surroundings, only to the sounds she would produce in those moments of utter focus. I usually let her be whenever she got into this kind of groove, but I realised that this was probably a rare moment where I’d be able to get a completely serious answer from her.

I sat up and crossed my legs.

“Heeyoung?” I tried softly.

She didn’t stop strumming her guitar, but she did answer with a questioning hum.

“Don’t you think it’s too soon for me to… to be with Daehyun?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Nana. It’s all about what you want.” Heeyoung even talks differently once she’s started focusing on her music. I wouldn’t be able to stretch this conversation on for long before I’d lose her concentration.

“But he’s only just broken up with Jinae.”

“Well, yeah… But let’s be honest, Nana, even you should be able to tell that he’s had feelings for you since before that. Isn't that the whole point of why they broke up?” she said softly. She stopped her soft strums and bent forward to pen something down in a notebook, before she gripped her guitar tightly again. Instead of resuming her playing, she turned to look at me with a challenging look, as if telling me to disagree with her so she’d be able to lecture me on how wrong I was.

When I didn’t, she said: “I get that you’re hesitating, but this tightrope walk that you’re performing for Daehyun has got to stop. Otherwise – and God forbid I’d ever say this again – it’s unfair towards Daehyun too. He’s being sincere with you here. I’ll be the first to say that the guy’s an idiot, but I acknowledge that he’s got a functioning brain nonetheless. There’s no doubt he’s put a lot of thought into this same matter, but still he seems to have made up his mind. He’s facing his feelings properly, Nana, so what’s stopping you from facing yours?”

What could it be, indeed? I wondered. Heeyoung was undoubtedly right. I’d probably already known what she’d just told me even before I got the chance to ask her, but a part of me was still uneasy.

“In the end, the fact that Daehyun has only just broken up with Jinae is just an excuse, isn’t it?” Heeyoung asked with a gentle smile now. “Because you’re scared of what might happen if you do give in.”

I thought about Daehyun’s hand in mine, his thumb tracing circles on my palm. I recalled his warm smile, the one that reached all the way to his beautiful eyes and wondered how I hadn’t fallen for him way before. I thought about the things I’d told myself – that we were in Incheon and that was why he had suddenly opened up like this. But it also put him in such a vulnerable position. It must have made him uneasy too. Perhaps even more so than I was.

Giving away your heart and putting yourself in a vulnerable position was honestly such a scary thing.

“Heeyoung, it’s so weird how you give out this good advice on love even though you yourself have never fallen in love before,” I muttered sleepily.

She chuckled. “I have, though. I’ve fallen in love before. Once.”

My ears perked up at this. “Really? With whom?”

“Aah, not so fast, grasshopper,” she said, a mysterious smile gracing her pretty features. She held out this exaggerated finger out at me, telling me to shush. “First you should solve your own mysteries. Only then do I permit you to uncover mine.”

I pouted at this. “That’s so unfair. How come you’ve never mentioned this to me before?”

“Because it was over before I knew it,” she said, her smile never fading away, though I didn’t think it really reached her eyes anymore. “Shouldn’t you go to bed now? You look tired.”

She was obviously trying to evade my question. Well, as long as I wouldn’t forget to corner her about this particular person in the future, it didn’t really matter if she did. I would spare her, this one time.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” I muttered, as I lay back down again and covered myself with the white blankets. “Good night, Heeyoung.”

Her voice sounded melodious even as I fell into a deep slumber.

“Good night, Nana.”