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So you can keep me
Inside the pocket of your ripped jeans
The backstage was a constantly flowing white-river rapid of celebrities and famous names, passing each other with nothing but a bow and a hurried generic “Good job” “Thank you”. It was only when cameras were present that anyone acted amicably with anyone – in the real behind-the-scenes, everyone was too exhausted or tight-pressed for time to say so much as the usual paper-thin greetings to the equally rushed and tired people pressing past them.
We’d finally caught our first break in ages. We had only a music show in the morning, and then the rest of the day off to rest. As we all took our respective seats in the too-familiar van, a collective sigh of relief filled the atmosphere, and for the first time in too long, we began talking about something other than life as an idol.
“I need to catch up on Attack on Titan,” Rapmon announced, quickly assuming his lazy stance of propping his knees up against the back of the seat in front of him. “Join me, Jungkook?”
“Nah,” I said. “I watched all the episodes already.”
“Yoongi hyung?” He asked hopefully, turning to the guy across from him.
“I just want to sleep, but sure, why not,” Suga grumbled, pulling his hood over his head and resting against the side of the car.
“You always want to sleep, hyung,” Jimin said, rolling his eyes. “So, Hoseok hyung…”
I tuned out of the conversation at hand, instead turning to the window and watching the city and cars race by, the yellow lines on the road turning into blurred flecks with the speed we were driving at. My hand instinctively went to rest on my pants pocket, where a familiar thin bump indicated there was something inside.
I dipped my fingers into the pocket and pulled the Polaroid out, holding it up to the early morning light. I’d seen it a thousand times, but it never failed to take my breath away.
It was from way back when, before we got so popular and so busy, when we called each other each night and I would fall asleep listening to the sound of her breathing. I’d been a rookie photographer back then – I still was, seeing as how I didn’t have time for anything now with our busy schedule – but beginner’s luck had made it possible for me to capture this one moment in time perfectly.
The view was from the side, with the sunset – she loved all the colors of the sunset and sunrise, she would spend an hour just looking at the sky if she could – light pouring in through the window, lighting up all her beautiful features. It dusted across her cheekbones, glowed against her lips, slid down her nose and across her forehead.
I closed my eyes, feeling the vibration of the car as I leaned against the window. In my dreams, she turned around to face me, smiling, and I wouldn’t be stuck with nothing but a 4x4 fragment of her.
So you can keep me
In the necklace you got when you were sixteen
I smiled at my computer screen, watching his face light up as they announced the winner, smiling and nodding and clapping as their leader – Namjoon – took the award and made a short speech before the encore started. He looked great on screen, but it was a kind of stretched great, like a great layered on with concealer and foundation and eye makeup.
He looked much better in real life. Maybe because, in real life, up close, he looked mine. Not the Jungkook surrounded by girls who loved him as much as I did in a much more shallow way. The Jungkook lit by the moonlight, his hair ruffled by the night breeze coming in through the opened window, who was mine and mine only.
I’d always been a rather selfish person, I knew.
I touched the familiar warm weight at my neck out of habit, feeling the grooves and indents of the carving. Using my thumb, I flicked the locket open with ease, sliding the tiny photo out and holding it up to the light.
The photo was blurry, but the memory was still in full-color 1080p – our picnic under the stars, when he taught me all the constellations we could see. Under the harsh lamp light, the photo was slightly see-through, a transparent memory of a boy made obscure by fame. A love rendered weak under glaring lights.
I switched off the desk lamp, plunging my room into semi-darkness, the moonlight coming in through the still-open blinds and lighting up my room in white slashes. In the soft glow of the moon, he wasn’t so transparent.
Sighing, I tucked the photo back into my locket.
When I’m away
“Jungkook, you’ll like this,” our manager said, looking pointedly at me.
Aware of the seven pairs of eyes on me, I quickly took my hand away from my jeans pocket, where it had been absentmindedly tapping the Polaroid. “Yeah?”
“We’re going to Busan for a little interview with a fashion magazine, and a fansign after that. Ten minutes away from your old neighborhood, in fact.”
My eyes went wide, hope making my heart pound into my throat. “Really?”
He smiled, nodding. “If everything goes according to the schedule, you’ll have time afterwards.”
I’ll have time.
To see her again.
I will remember how you kissed me
I drew my scarf around my neck to protect it from the biting October winds, glad I brought my mittens and that the trench coat I’d lent from my mom did a very good job of keeping me warm. Since the location of the fansign was a mere ten minutes’ drive away from my house, I decided to just take the bus. Unfortunately, I’d gotten off a stop too early and was forced to walk ten minutes in the cold to the location.
But he was worth it. He was worth everything.
Finally, the building loomed into view, as well as the crowd of fans already waiting outside the entrance. For a split second, I almost wanted our relationship to be public, so I could just walk right in, right to backstage, right up to him and grab his face in my hands and kiss him.
But it wasn’t what either of us wished for, so I took my place at the end of the line.
Under the lamp post back on Sixth Street
Looking up, I suddenly realized why the street I’d been waiting at for the past few minutes looked so familiar. We’d taken a walk here, in the middle of the night, after he’d come to my bedroom window with tears streaming down his face and I’d held him until he had enough energy to claim he was okay again.
“Hey?” He’d asked, stopping suddenly.
I’d stopped with him, looking up at him quizzically. “Yeah?”
“Thank you,” he’d said, turning to face me. It had struck me yet again – how lucky I was to have him, this human being who was beautiful and gorgeous and imperfectly perfect in every sense of the term, literally and figuratively and metaphorically and oh god he was so beautiful it took my breath away. “I really needed this.”
I’d smiled up at him. “You know I’m always here for you.”
Then he’d smiled, and before I’d known it I’d been pressed up against the lamp post, the cold pole pressing between my shoulder blades, his lips lightly ghosting over mine, warm and breathtaking as the sunsets and half-dawns I loved to look at.
And he was a sunset I would never tire of watching.
Hearing you whisper through the phone...
Waiting behind the empty table, listening to the excited cheering of the fans outside the closed doors, I pressed the phone to my ear nervously, each ring echoing through my head.
What if she doesn’t pick up? My mind pressed me. What if-
A click. “Hello?”
I almost dropped the phone.
She sounded the same as she always had – that warm voice reminding of rainy afternoons spent folding origami butterflies and hearts and stringing them up across the ceiling, lying on the floor afterwards and just silently looking at each other, knowing each other.
Loving each other.
I realized then just how much of her couldn’t be kept in a 4x4 stuffed into the front pocket of my pants.
I licked my lips and cleared my throat, finding it within me to speak. “Hey,” I whispered.
A sharp inhale and a burst of static followed, before her voice filled the speaker again. “Jungkook?” She sounded like she could barely believe it. Like I was her everything. I bit my lip, acknowledging that I didn’t deserve this kind of love.
“Wh-where are you?” I asked.
“Outside,” was her answer.
I’m talking to her. I can’t believe I’m talking to her. “You shouldn’t be, it’s cold-”
A quiet, familiar caramel-macchiato laugh lit my heart on fire in the best way possible. “I mean I’m outside, Jungkook.” God, I wanted to just lie down and listen to her say my name over and over again. “Outside the fansign building.”
I gasped. It took all of my self-control not to shout at the security to find her and bring her inside immediately. Instead, I clutched the phone to my ear, my heart pounding in my chest. “You are?”
“Yeah. When are they opening the doors?”
I looked up to find a security guard unlocking the front door. “Now,” I whispered.
A crackling, static-filled silence filled the space between us, followed by a soft “Okay.”
“I’ll see you?” I said.
“I’ll see you,” she agreed. “I love you, Jungkook.”
“Love you too,” I breathed before a click signalled that the call had been disconnected.
I looked up at the mass of fans who were now flooding the venue, searching every stranger’s hopeful admiring face for the one pair of familiar eyes who didn’t need any source of light to shine.
And then I saw her.
Wait for me to come home.