Love Remains

Chapter 11

Han So-Hee's POV

So-Hee is ecstatic. She's over the moon really. This can't be happening! No, it's not because Jungkook hasn't called for two weeks now and his contact has dwindled to a few text messages and the like where he calls her an ungrateful slut, a fucking whore, and other synonyms. It's because she's flying to Daegu tomorrow and Taehyung's gig is scheduled on the exact same night.

 And the cherry on the cake is that he has deleted the picture of him with that God-awful-looking singer, Seo Ji-Hye. She has already sent a mail thanking him for that. She checks her roster and she checks Taehyung's updates again. This is divine intervention. But just as the news sinks in it's more distressing than it's gladdening. Firstly there's this entire thing about what she's going to wear, and God willing she does find something to wear which she knows she wouldn't, she has to go up and talk to him, and she doesn't know how she's going to gather the courage for that.

 She's sitting in the room making plans to shop when her father knocks at her door. She gets up, opens the door, and walks back to bed, and sits there. Her father keeps standing at the door. He's in his work clothes, which means an ill-fitting shirt, a pair of brown trousers, and a chunky set of sports shoes.

'I'm sorry I c . . . checked your roster,' he stammers.

 'I saw you're flying to Daegu.'

' And?' asks So-Hee.

 The conversation is still scant between So-Hee and her father. She doesn't know what to talk to him about. And he only has one question to ask her, if Jungkook is still troubling her. Beyond that, they really don't talk.

' I'm flying on the same day to Gwangju. From what I can see we will need to reach the airport roughly about the same time. I was wondering if you were thinking of sharing the cab?' asks the father.

'Sure,' says So-Hee. Her father nods. He's still standing there. So-Hee tells him that she has the stuff to do and her father slinks away. So-Hee's not angry with her father, just awkward, and she will always be awkward. She shuts these thoughts off and thinks of what she's going to wear and she's clearly at a loss. 

She doesn't want to look like a groupie or a one-night stand, but she does want to stand out as well. Her anxiousness gets worse as the time of the flight approaches and she starts to feel sick in the stomach. Like really sick. She wants to call in sick and not go to Daegu for a shoot, not now, not ever. She has gone over and over the words, she would say to him but every time it sounds more stupid and she doesn't know a way around it. The little black dress she bought a couple of days back, a dress that she thought made her look like a total style diva, now seems to have become tight and loose simultaneously from all the wrong places. Frankly, she looks like a skinny elephant in it now. 

She has spent the entire night talking to Hye-Jin who asked So-Hee to take it easy but it's easier said than done.

Her alarm rings and she has hardly slept—she looks like an old troll, absolutely hideous. She wants to bury herself inside her blanket, if possible, below the topsoil, the lithosphere, the asthenosphere, right down to the core. She's surprised she remembers the break-up of the earth's crust or whatever, right down to its very center. She's still wallowing in self-pity and anger when her door is knocked. It's her father and she shouts that she will be ready in just a minute. So-Hee jumps out of her bed, changes into her clothes, checks if she has packed everything, wonders if she's looking like a housemaid, and is convinced that she is, and runs out of her bedroom.

 Her father is waiting at the breakfast table and there are two bowls of cereal, he's eating out of one of them. So-Hee quietly goes and sits there. She pours milk into the muesli, a kind she hadn't tasted before, and starts to eat. 'Not bad,' she thinks. Better than the cornflakes. Her father's phone rings and it's the cab driver. They both get up. Her father locks the door behind her. He's just carrying a small hand suitcase while today, So-Hee is traveling heavy.