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Questions, Byulyi realized, were a vital part to life.
A simple 'Is this the right answer?' to her classmates when she was younger, 'Is this the way to RBW?' to a random man on the street, 'Do you think we'll be successful when we debut?' she asked her members.
And as she sat on Jin's passenger seat, questions, she realized, could have saved her from the heartache that was to come her way.
"A date?" she asked, voice higher than usual.
Jin kept his eyes on the road, steady hands gripping the steering wheel as he drove them on a path he knew well. He spared Byulie the quickest of glance before he replied, "Yeah. Tae set me up on a date this Saturday so I'm not available that day."
Byulyi's mouth seemed to have forgotten how to work as they hung open in astonishment.
But weren't they already dating?
Wasn't he already taken?
She certainly thought they were—but apparently they were not.
"Oh."
"That's okay, right?" he asked, maneuvering his car smoothly in the parking lot of Byulyi's apartment building. "If I went on a date while we're—you know."
Byulyi blinked at him, the words lodging in her throat.
If Byulyi was any braver, she would have grabbed him by his neck and kissed him so hard his lips would bleed. She would have called him a fucking moron for even asking that question after what he said last time. She would have told him how it was absolutely not alright for him to go on a date with another woman while she lay on his bed beside him like she had been doing all this time before he even met her.
That is, if she was any braver.
"Absolutely" she exhaled, hand darting to the car's handle to open the door, her bracelet of stars shining brightly against her skin. "I mean we had an agreement, didn't we?"
Byulyi's mother always warned her of men who wore black and smoked cigarettes.
'They're smooth talkers', she told her. 'They'd tell you everything you'd want to hear and make fragile promises they'd break later. They'd hold your hand and kiss your lips and cover your eyes so you wouldn't see how much of you they were robbing.'
Her mother would stroke her hair and kiss her forehead and Byulyi would listen to her as the elder continued her advice.
'Never let them near you my Byulie. They'd take your heart from your chest and break it in half without a second thought.'
So ever since she was teen until now as a woman well into her adulthood, she always avoided people who spelled bad news. She never accepted dates from people who knew how to make her stutter, never dated anyone that was fluent in flattery.
Just like her mother told her.
But as she watched Jin, eyes bright and smile wide, laugh loudly along with whatever bullshit the female idol in front of him just said, Byulyi wanted to drive all the way to her hometown just to ask her mother what she should do now.
She pushed herself off the wall she was leaning on, frowning as she turned on her heel to go back to their waiting room.
Her mother never warned her of men who were soft and kind that raised her to the heavens before letting her fall back down on her own.
