Work Text:
The lights are piercing, beautiful, and all encompassing, Xuanyi knows. They shine and sparkle and dawn on her, accentuate each feature, the glisten of her lips and the glimmer of her eyeshadow. She sees it in the cameras and the photos fansites release after.
This doesn’t change the fact she tires of them quickly, quicker each time, even. She loves it, it’s what she was made to do. But she leaves and there’s instantly a weight that falls from her shoulders with the shudder of her breath, the moon that shines a little too bright even now, when the air is thick with smog and you can’t even make it out entirely.
Xuanyi can’t even tell if it’s in its first quarter yet, but she supposes it doesn’t matter. Not really.
Perhaps it’s the fact she’s in South Korea now, she muses, entertains. It reminds her a little bit of what she’s lost, and simultaneously what she’s gained after going home. It feels like something she should miss, but really, there’s not much about Korea she misses. Not really.
She tugs her bottom lip through her teeth, most definitely staining them with red. There’s no more schedules tonight, anyway, so she doesn’t have to care much about her makeup. About anything. The thought brings forth a sort of weariness she’d pushed aside, and a yawn is tugged from her lips. It’s a half-hour drive back to the hotel, anyway, so maybe she’ll be able to rest a little bit on the way.
Xuanyi unlocks her phone and checks the reminder she’d set of the description of her chauffeur’s car. Black Hyundai sudan. Easy.
She spots it quicker than she’d thought she would, wrapping fingers loosely around the door handle and tugging it open, dropping to the seat and fumbling through her bag for her compact, because even if it’s just her manager and the driver, red lipstick on her teeth looks a little ridiculous.
“Hello,” She greets in Mandarin, still searching for the mirror, “Do you have any water?”
A sort of choked sound escapes from someone who’s sat across from her, rather than in front, and Xuanyi slowly raises her head, meeting eyes with none other than Bona.
Jiyeon. Kim Jiyeon.
Her stage name registering before her given one brings forth a lingering sort of ache she’d learned to ignore over the years, soft calls of Jiyeon-ah and a ringing laughter she’d associated with that name.
“Xuanyi,” Jiyeon breathes, eyes wide, and Xuanyi freezes. She should leave. She should open the door and go find the right car. But she doesn’t. No words fall from her lips either, she just stares.
“Are you ... Why are you here?”
There. A question Xuanyi has an answer to. One she doesn’t have to think about. It’d just be great if her body began acting in response to her mind rather than her heart, which feels as if it’s began thumping at about tenfold its usual pace.
“I had a fansign,” She supplies, through a mouth that’s becoming more useless by the second.
Jiyeon blinks. She blinks, and there’s that familiar quirk of her lip, that familiar brief moment where surprise registers on her perfect face. It’s one Xuanyi had long come to know.
Had. Past tense. It shrivels up bitterly in her chest and surfaces as a weed, plain and unsightly. Xuanyi rips it out of the soil before it’s given the chance to properly root.
“I know.” A pause, “I meant why are you ..."
Xuanyi doesn’t focus on the clarification of Jiyeon’s previous question, though. She focuses on the statement preluding it.
I know. Two words, a wave that’s surfaced from a still ocean, crashing over her beach left dry for so long. I know. Is that why she’s here?
They slid out pretty — like everything Jiyeon is — and thoughtlessly, as if it were a fact of life, not an admission that brings something roaring to life Xuanyi didn’t even know had died.
“Xuanyi?”
Even just the two syllables that form her name have Xuanyi backpedaling on the past 5 minutes. This doesn’t feel real. She pinches herself, the first movement she’s made since stepping into what feels both like the beginning of her demise and the rising of her sun.
“Uh,” She just says, unable to form anything of coherence.
“In this car,” Jiyeon clarifies, “Here. Physically here. Next to me.”
Next to me.
“Do you mind it?” Xuanyi opens out on a whim, the words slow and careful, deceitfully so. Xuanyi thinks if she were at all in her right mind she wouldn’t have even considered such a question, but she feels sort of in a daze. It’s worthy of noting that Jiyeon’s always had that sort of effect on her.
“Of course not,” Jiyeon says softly, “Don’t be silly.”
Her heart sings with Jiyeon’s affirmation. Of course not. But she’s not being silly. This is silly.
Xuanyi. Step out of the car. Less energy than it takes to count backwards from ten. But of course, she can’t. She doesn’t. Couldn’t if she tried.
“But isn’t there someone waiting for you?”
“Someone..." Xuanyi repeats, and she almost forgets what it means, “Sorry, huh?”
Jiyeon gives her a sympathetic look. “A manager?”
Xuanyi blinks, scrambles forward to catch sight of the person who sits in the driver’s and the passenger’s seats. Some driver she doesn’t know, and some manager she might recognize from one of Jiyeon’s instagram posts. She doesn’t even know why she bothered to look, because this is Jiyeon’s car. Of course Jiyeon’s staff is here.
“...Yeah. There is. In a car that’s somehow entirely identical to this one.”
Jiyeon chuckles, “What are the chances of that?”
“Infinitesimal.”
They fall into a comfortable silence. It would be a great time to step out of the car and forget this ever happened, but it’s beginning to feel impossible with the seconds that tick by.
“Acting?”
Jiyeon whips her head back to Xuanyi, tilts it a little. Her hair catches in her lashes, but her hand raises to brush the strands away quicker than they’d stuck. It’s a little scary how quickly things can disappear like that, but it’s scarier how quickly they make their return.
“Have you been doing it much?”
“Oh,” Jiyeon says, “A little. I like it.”
Xuanyi smiles sorely, “I know you do.”
The guilty wince that flashes across Jiyeon’s mouth is fleeting but all too telling.
“2521 and Joseon lawyer,” Jiyeon says, after a moment, “Which hasn’t been released yet, but we’ve pretty much wrapped up filming.”
“Ah,” Xuanyi nods, “Any spoilers you can give me?”
Jiyeon clicks her tongue, “No, you don’t get any special treatment just ‘cause you’re..."
“‘Cause I’m?”
“You know..." Jiyeon draws out softly, sings-songs, tracing a finger along her own thigh.
Xuanyi doesn’t know. But there’s an urge. A wondering. A question that lies unasked, unanswered. An answer that lies unprompted, but sits between them still. It would be so easy to prompt Jiyeon further, but today’s Xuanyi isn’t particularly famous for choosing easy.
Xuanyi, instead, watches the repetitive movement, the ghost of dainty fingers across pale skin. Rhythmic, hypnotizing. Jiyeon has gotten slimmer.
“Make sure you’re eating enough,” Xuanyi chides, instead, and it’s lighter than the tone that lies beneath it.
“Well, are you?” Jiyeon counters, eyeing Xuanyi’s collarbone that peeks out from black sheen fabric. She isn’t, to be truthful, but that’s the industry they’re in.
Xuanyi points it out and Jiyeon nods sadly.
Silence, again. It feels heavier and yet impossibly delicate. If she inhales a little too deep, it’ll begin to hurt. A thumb hooks into her collar, hastily sending the fabric fluttering, and she relishes in the moments her skin meets cool air.
Xuanyi’s phone has yet to ring and Jiyeon has yet to complain she’s occupying one of the seats in her chauffeur car, and she lets herself settle comfortably into the idea that perhaps she’s been forgotten and people aren’t frantically searching for her. Her phone has yet to ring.
Xuanyi hopes.
If a tree falls in a forest when no one is around, did it even make a sound?
There is no one searching. Not if she pretends there isn’t.
Jiyeon says, “Come with me.”
The words are out of her mouth before either of them know what to do with them. Jiyeon doesn’t immediately backtrack, and for that, Xuanyi lets herself wonder. Theoretically, of course.
Come with me.
Xuanyi could, she really, really could. And she really, really wants to.
“Just for the night,” Jiyeon speaks up again, and Xuanyi blinks.
Because here’s the kicker: Xuanyi knows everything she’s pushed aside to develop a name for herself in the industry, solo, no less, could, no, would easily be threaded together in less than a night. Bittersweet, her tongue clues her in. It already has.
Jiyeon and Xuanyi for one night, nothing less, nothing more. The idea of it is bewitchingly thrilling.
And Xuanyi wonders, of all the cars in the world, of every single one, of all the cars parked in front of the MBC dream center...
If she’d just walked by, perhaps paid a little more attention instead of stepping into the first car she saw, would she have continued her Jiyeon-less life? Would Jiyeon have seen her? Stepped out of the car and send her heart to a smattering stop regardless?
But was this destiny?
Xuanyi doesn’t think she believes in destiny, but the coincidence is... Well, the chances were infinitesimal at best and impossible at worst.
And yet...
It was an easy mistake to make, which, of course, she had a much higher chance of making. But Jiyeon, in a car that’s somehow entirely identical to her chauffeur's...
Well, the chances were infinitesimal. And yet.
And yet.
Xuanyi breathes still.
Through her loss, she has breathed. Through packing and catching the eyes that linger on her, mirroring her own, she has breathed. And yet.
With Jiyeon’s reappearance, she breathes lighter. Her hands clasp at her bag, making purchase on faux-not-faux leather, shiny and plastic and fake.
Xuanyi chooses real.
“Ok,” Xuanyi decides, and Jiyeon tilts her head ever so slightly to the side, “Just for the night.”
Xuanyi lets Jiyeon take her shaking hand that stills with the achingly familiar touch before she whispers soft directions to the drivers. Xuanyi is a little rusty on her Korean, but she recognizes the address.
The lights fade as the car hums to life and Xuanyi shuts off her phone. In the back of the car, she shuffles a little closer to Jiyeon.