The Ocean and the Moon

Chapter 9: June

C rushes down the stairs. He didn't ask why. He can barely breathe. He didn't ask what was so wrong with him and H being close. He gets in his car and drives and he doesn't know where to until a couple of hours later when he realizes he's just passed the rest stop where he and H shared tteokbokki and pastries on their way to the first shooting location. And his eyes are on the road but he is remembering the very first time his fingers brushed against H's skin not in character but as himself. How he immediately wanted his whole body against H's whole body, and maybe probably that was why he hadn't dared try touching them before and how that evening, days later, in the darkness H had the biggest smile while C undressed him and he could feel himself burst into flames and then as now the yearning, like ink in water, and it all makes him angrier.

He thinks back at how, awkwardness and all, that first time H touched him it felt so right. He felt like a question being answered. How days later waking up he felt like someone instead of the ghost of someone. How everything had been shitty and confusing and every morning was waking up staring at the ceiling wondering what in the world he was doing and then finally something made sense. And it changed nothing but it changed everything. And it was about H but it was mostly about all that he, C, was and how he could never go back. And now those people, who know nothing?!

He screams at the wheel and drives on. While in the room, he thought "they're just doing their job - they're paid to protect my career and my image." And it's the fact that they work for him while obviously not understanding a single thing about him. And it's the idea that he could simply turn off his feelings or that he could live the whole rest of his life in romantic hiding. And it's the fact that he could decide to throw his career away and still it wouldn't change the fact that H is a part of this now and he hates the fact that for a moment he let himself forget that anything with him would lead to the circus and to his team intervening to try to preserve C's career as it had always been. That anything with him would never just be about them.

And he screams at the wheel again.

***

And suddenly C reaches the beach. The one where H took his picture. Where the director called "action" and their characters kissed - and so they kissed - in front of the cameras and he thought he was going to die. The thought makes him grip the wheel even tighter. He lets out a frustrated groan, half wishing the beach was quiet enough so he could go for a swim, but it's sunset in summer and it is crowded on the sand. He turns his car around and looks for a quiet place to park, not knowing what he's going to do next.

He ends up somehow by a hiking trail on the outskirts of the city. Calling H is out of the question - he can't see C like this and C can't risk them believing he is having second thoughts about their relationship.

He takes out his phone and calls the only person he can.

"Hey!" Hannah's face immediately appears on his screen. "Hey?" she says again, her expression changing from happy to confused once she sees his face. "What's wrong?"

"We've been doing promo these past few weeks together." His voice is low and hoarse, but he is keeping it steady.

"Oh no." He can see from her face she knows where this is going.

"I was called into a meeting with my team this afternoon. They said -" he takes a shaky breath, "they said rumors were starting, about me and H, that online magazines were asking questions, that we'd been photographed together, and that we should take a step back. From each other."

"Oh no," Hannah says again.

"How can they ask that?"

"You know how Korea is. How the industry is."