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When Soyeon had been silent as the grave for over twenty straight minutes, it dawned on Yuqi that something might be off. Soyeon wasn’t any kind of social butterfly, and they all knew it, but she usually had a lot to say within the circle of their group. Her brain was always working overtime on something. Even if that something was just a dry crack at Yuqi’s expense when she saw an opening.
It seemed like her face had been pinched and unhappy since they first left the car and joined a bustling crowd inside the venue. Definitely since they’d been shown their table and left unattended to kill time before the event started broadcasting.
Was she nervous? That didn’t seem like Soyeon. Awards season was her bread and butter; she (they) had been cleaning up for the past couple of years now.
Maybe she had cramps or something. Not enough fibre in her limited diet.
Yuqi leaned over as the overhead lights dimmed. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why?” Soyeon was slouching in her chair with both arms crossed over her stomach. She glanced sideways at Yuqi, expression shuttered. “I’m fine.”
“You’re scowling about something. Do you need to shit?”
Soyeon’s frown grew somehow tighter around the eyes. “Don’t be disgusting. This is just my resting face, I’m concentrating on the stage.”
After a long look at the empty stage elevated a few feet away, where crewmembers dressed in all black were still setting up the microphones, Yuqi turned back to Soyeon with a bemused expression. Soyeon met her eyes this time but didn’t respond to her unspoken question.
So Yuqi picked up the thread herself. “Come on, like I don’t know the difference. This is your bad mood face. Your resting face looks a lot more cross-eyed.”
“Let’s not talk for a while,” Soyeon said in a flat tone.
She was definitely in a mood.
Yuqi lifted her purse up from her lap to her chest, holding it close as she shook her head. With a weary sigh, she crooned, “Oh, Gigi, what can I do? There’s a scary unnie who says she’s fine, but her eyes sure looked dangerous just now.
“Tell me you didn’t bring the rabbit.”
“She’s in my bag.” Yuqi paused then, setting her purse down to jab her fingers right to left in a loose rendition of their choreography. “My bag. Anyway, it’s just a little one. For good luck, right?”
“It’s just another fake award, we don’t particularly need it.”
“Wow, something’s really got you all surly tonight,” Yuqi observed.
Soyeon was quiet for a moment, but when she turned her head again she looked apologetic. “Sorry. There’s just someone here who bothers me.”
“Oh.” Yuqi blinked a few times. The gears in her head took a few rotations, and then she pointed at herself and blurted out, “Is it me?”
“What? No, you don’t bother me.” Yuqi smiled at this, feeling touched over the small confession. Soyeon being Soyeon, she couldn’t let the moment linger. “Not usually.”
That seemed to draw a line under the subject, but Yuqi was far from done. If Soyeon wouldn’t elaborate then maybe she could figure it out for herself; they met a lot of the same people, and in a lot of the same places. Yuqi straightened up and rose half out of her chair, scanning the room in an obvious way.
Some familiar faces, but nobody who’d be on Soyeon’s radar. Idols in their age group were polite to her at least, even respectful, if not overly friendly. First impressions made her seem like a bit of an ice queen at times. They didn’t know how cute she really was. How clumsy with her feelings as well as her hands. Hm. Would it be a man or a woman? Maybe someone younger? She couldn’t really picture Soyeon having beef with a teenager.
“Would you sit down?” Soyeon hissed at her, raising a hand to swat at Yuqi’s arm where it rested on the back of her seat. “People are looking over here.”
“Not a chance, not until you tell me who it is.” Yuqi smiled innocently and took another sweep of the room with her eyes. “I’m just going to start making guesses all night long otherwise. I swear, I’ll drive you crazy.”
Soyeon made a low gurgle of frustration from deep in her throat. When Yuqi kept kneeling on her seat, she finally surrendered. “Look over by the bar. Be subtle. Red jacket with the gelled hair, he’s fixing his tie.”
Yuqi’s head spun immediately to the corner of the room where the bar area was just opening up, not at all subtly, and she fixed her eyes on the culprit. He didn’t look like much. Someone like that was getting Soyeon’s hackles up like a feral cat, but Yuqi had never laid eyes on the guy before – or she simply didn’t remember, which was even worse.
“Huh. I don’t recognise him at all,” she said, a bit disappointed.
Losing some of her interest, Yuqi dropped back into her seat. In the process she ended up kicking Shuhua’s leg on her other side by accident, and got a sharp heel dug into the bridge of her foot in retaliation. Yuqi muttered a curse at Shuhua in Mandarin under her breath before Soyeon piped up again.
“Just after our debut, like really early on,” she started. “I went to an event without the rest of you. It must have been for a solo schedule. He approached me there.”
Yuqi stared at her expectantly, waiting for her to carry on. Soyeon’s eyes were glued to the tablecloth in front of her.
“He’d been drinking, I could tell, the smell was hard to miss. But it doesn’t excuse anything. I really hate sleazy men.” She muttered the last part quietly.
“Did he…” Yuqi trailed off, not sure how to ask such a hard question in a less direct way. But they’d always been straightforward with each other before. “Did he try to touch you?”
“No. No, he just tried to pick me up. Just talking.”
Yuqi sniffed, even though she felt a small measure of relief. Soyeon was tough mentally, but Yuqi didn’t like to imagine her by herself like that, with people around who wouldn’t show her the admiration she deserved. The Jeon Soyeon. It was wrong on every level.
“Yuck. He’s got to be older than my dad. I hope you ripped into him in front of everybody. Hey, let me hear the diss rap version.” Yuqi cupped her hands over her mouth and started to beatbox sloppily. When Soyeon didn’t so much as crack a smile, she stopped short. “No?”
Soyeon shook her head, frowning. “It was a press event, everyone was looking, so… I just pretended not to hear it. Then he started in on my looks because I was ignoring him.”
“What the hell?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Soyeon said, meeting her eyes as Yuqi gawked back.
“And you didn’t say anything? You?”
“Even I know when to pick my battles.” Soyeon put a hand up to her face, biting her thumbnail in frustration. The event staff were leaving the stage already, so time was almost up for conversation. “That might not be your M.O., but I don’t need another target on my back, thanks.”
“He’s just some ancient old celebrity, if he’s even one at all. Like a daytime talk show host. He’s nothing, Soyeon, just— just scum,” Yuqi said with her voice barely under a normal speaking level.
“Yuqi,” Soyeon snapped, and Minnie leaned across her to shush them both with a warning finger. Soyeon repeated the motion with a finger against her lips.
It was always shut up, Yuqi. And never you make a great point, Yuqi, thank you for having my back. Also, you look really hot in that dress.
Well, whatever.
“Fine, since you don’t want to make a big deal out of it. But if he says anything in front of me, I’m going to ruin his whole life. He’ll never leave the house again.” Yuqi leaned back in her seat gruffly and mimicked Soyeon’s posture, arms crossed over the purse in her lap.
Soyeon rolled her eyes, her long fingernails drumming against her bicep. “Right. His table’s way over there across the room anyway, so you’ll hardly notice. I already checked over the seating plan earlier.”
When she’d had the time to squirrel away and do that, Yuqi hadn’t the faintest idea. But the fact that Soyeon had gone to such an extent was concerning enough.
“He really got to you, huh?”
“I’m done talking about it,” Soyeon said firmly. “Just focus on the performance later, that’s all that matters to me right now. You missed a cue during rehearsal, don’t think I hadn’t noticed.”
Leave it to Soyeon to put their work before any and all personal problems. At least it was familiar ground they were treading now.
“God, you’re such a drill sergeant,” Yuqi said with relish, leaning forward in her chair again. “Yes, sir. I’ll be a total machine up there, just you wait.”
“There’s nothing wrong with paying attention to the small details.” Soyeon uncrossed her arms, and when Yuqi glanced over she was finally looking a bit more cheerful. Smug was a better word; her lips were turning up at the corners. “You said you want to be a leader, right? That’s a good place to start.”
Yuqi scoffed at the insinuation and smirked back knowingly. “Paying attention to my ass, you mean? I know that’s why you were really keeping an eye on me.”
To this, Soyeon responded with dead silence and turned her head in the other direction. So obvious, Yuqi thought. As Soyeon picked up a complimentary water bottle from the table and tried to drink in a delicate camera-flattering way, Yuqi pressed her bag up to her chest again.
“Oh, Gigi,” she said dramatically. “Now she’s ignoring me, what should I do? It’s like I’m being punished for being too sexy.”
Soyeon didn’t deign to respond to this obvious bait either, but Shuhua took it upon herself to pinch the skin of Yuqi’s arm hard between two fingers.
Yuqi jerked away violently. “Ah! You little—!”
By pure instinct, she raised a fist to swing at Shuhua, only to feel Soyeon’s small fingers close around her wrist and snatch it back down into her lap. Yuqi deflated immediately and settled for throwing Shuhua an acidic glare in the low lighting around their table.
Music had started to swell up from the stage, resonating from a large set of speakers overhead. Lights swallowed the raised platform, but left their table in darkness amongst everyone else’s.
Within that dark space, Yuqi felt Soyeon’s fingers slide down from her wrist to her palm, still holding Yuqi’s hand in her lap. Her expression gave nothing away when Yuqi stared over, but at least she didn’t seem as irritated now. Yuqi tucked that small victory away and wrapped her fingers around Soyeon’s warm hand.
If Soyeon wanted to talk about it a better time, she’d know who to come to.
-
An hour later, Yuqi was returning to their table from the bar with a drink in hand. The interval was almost through, and she was getting bored waiting for their call to get ready backstage. Having to sit and overtly react to things for the cameras was a tedious exercise at the best of times.
Then she noticed the guy from earlier, sitting comfortably at one of the tables not far out of her way. Red jacket, gelled hair. He looked a little too pleased with himself for a nobody who hit on much younger women.
Yuqi swerved along her route to pass the back of his seat, and making use of her powerful acting chops (she impressed herself more every day) she jammed her foot behind his chair leg and pretended to trip.
Her glass upturned and slopped half the drink into his lap.
“Oops!” Yuqi clapped a hand over her mouth as he jumped back from the table. “Oh man, I’m so clumsy.”
He spit something nonsensical at her, red in the face, before seeming to catch the watchful eyes of their extended audience. A smile that was all gritted teeth pulled across his wrinkled face as he tried to pat himself down with a napkin.
Yuqi bowed politely and shook her head at the dark stain on the front of his jacket, spreading down over his pressed trousers. “Is it expensive? I sure hope not, because that’s probably not going to wash out.”
She could almost hear the phone cameras snapping mutely from a hundred different angles, but it didn’t matter anyway. What could they say? Idle’s super star Song Yuqi spilled her drink? They’d probably accuse her of being drunk again, but there was nothing alcoholic in there to begin with.
The loser in red was barking something at an approaching staff member, so Yuqi apologised once, as an afterthought, and then wandered off back to her table.
She hoped Soyeon would praise her, and sort of expected the opposite. But it was already worth losing half her drink.