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“Do you remember when I got sick in 2019?” Jeonghan asks. He stares up at the ceiling; Joshua’s plain white, totally uninteresting ceiling.
“Of course I do,” Joshua replies. “I was worried about you. We all were.”
So, they’re a bottle of red wine deep between them and half of their members are trapped in the military and Jeonghan worries more and more with each passing day that he’s too old or too tired to be an idol anymore and old memories come back to haunt him again and again like clockwork. 2019 was a million years ago or it was yesterday. Jeonghan’s worn out body doesn’t remember the choreography but he remembers the smell. The ache, the desperation, the hunger.
Being vague with the media or fans is one thing. Being vague with their members is another. Jeonghan never came up with a convincing excuse, instead let the managers do all the talking. Dodging questions was easy, because he wasn’t the only one going through something at the time. Everyone had their own shit to worry about before they worried about Jeonghan.
“I wasn’t sick,” Jeonghan starts. It’s in his throat and he knows that it’s going to come out now and he’s not scared because it’s Joshua. And more than that he’s not scared because it’s already over. The story has ended; he’s just retelling the tale to a new audience member. Telling Joshua doesn’t change the outcome. “I wasn’t sick, I was pregnant.”
Joshua makes a small shocked sound. An oh.
Jeonghan doesn’t look away from the ceiling. The spotlights embedded into the plaster look cheap. He won’t tell Joshua that.
“Seriously?” Joshua asks. The tone of his voice makes Jeonghan laugh.
“Do you really think I’d lie about that, Joshuji?” he asks.
“No, I guess I don’t,” Joshua says. Jeonghan isn’t sure it matters either way. “What happened?” Joshua asks. “If you’re okay with telling me.”
Jeonghan takes a deep breath. He runs an open palm over the textured surface of Joshua’s couch. Fabric that makes the scar on his elbow tingle when he catches it at the wrong angle.
“I didn’t know what to do when I found out so I just didn’t tell anyone,” Jeonghan starts. There are some words that he doesn’t like to use, that taste rotten in his mouth. Too real, or too trivial. Words that he hears too many other people use, as if it’ll take his experience away from him if he joins them.
“It was easy to hide, obviously, everyone was struggling then it was a bad time, so my problems could just blend into the background. It was just mine, and I think in a lot of ways that made it worse. I should’ve dealt with it sooner because as soon as I started to think about it I couldn’t stop.
“Think about it like…?” Joshua asks.
“Like I could have it. Everything would just work out in my favour. I’d lay in bed for hours and even though I was exhausted I couldn’t fall asleep. I’d just think of little scenarios of what would happen if I kept it to myself until the end. I thought about happy Seungcheollie would be, how maybe we could’ve had something if the timing worked out.” It’s so silly to say it out loud. Jeonghan turns his head to look at Joshua. His face is red, shiny. The wine glass in his hand is empty but he isn’t putting it down.
“It was Seungcheol’s baby?”
Jeonghan’s stomach turns. Yeah. That. He swallows all the saliva in his mouth. He looks back to the ceiling.
“Who else’s was it going to be?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s obvious.”
“Mn. The money wasn’t the same back then as it is now, but we were going alright. The fantasy was intoxicating.” Jeonghan sighs. It’s easier to remember it like this. Sometimes his mind wanders back, replays the same hypotheticals over and over again, although now he’s forced to see they were always impossible. Seungcheol wouldn’t have been happy. He was 23. Jeonghan would’ve ruined his career.
“And then, just like that, it was over. Siwon-noona found me hiding in the bathroom - it happened at a stupid venue, horrible timing. I don’t remember who I was there with, not all of us, anyway.” Jeonghan is far away from himself as he says it, like he’s watching a movie of those scenes leading up to the end. The first spot of blood he noticed, the first cramp, the creeping sense of dread crawling up his spine. It’s not fresh, he can’t feel it again, it’s all secondhand. Jeonghan is empathetic to the character on the screen .
Joshua is graciously quiet. He lets Jeonghan continue, “I was going to deal with it alone - just like I had everything else, but I just let Noona in after I heard her voice. I didn’t even try to lie.”
The scene cuts away to an aerial shot, the camera positioned high enough to see between plasterboard walls of the set. Siwon-noona on the other side of the door. She’s dressed in all black, has her hair in a low ponytail like she always did. From this angle Jeonghan looks so small. There’s deep red blood on the bathroom floor.
“There was so much blood. She didn’t even say anything, she just locked the door and got on with it. She told me what I wanted to hear but I don’t remember what she said.”
The audio is corrupted. It’s nothing but the ringing in his ears that drowns out everything else. He knows it hurts, but he can’t tell where. His heart beats in his throat. There’s blood on Siwon-noona hands.
“I never even saw it. I’m not entirely convinced it was real. I don’t know - I thought maybe it would give me more closure if I got to see, but it’s hard to say. It’s not like it would’ve changed anything. I don’t think it would plague me any less than it does.”