Winter Hearts

Sounds Happy

Siana got off the bus, a little cramped but happy to be travelling. On their first stop, not far away from Itea, she had gone looking for a hot snack in the small eateries the bus had parked in front of and found herself by a souvlaki counter that had already prepared sticks of cubed meat grilled simply with herbs, lemon juice and oil. As she waited with a few other passengers for her turn, she pulled out her phone and checked her social media.

It was no surprise to find notifications for updates from the boys.

N had done it first, explaining their long break with a hint of their comeback. There was no explanation as to where they were, just a pretty selfie, which she recognised to have been taken on their balcony, with the golden light of a sunset on his face. N and his nicely organised insta page, she thought with a smile. She liked the picture and went looking for posts from the rest of the boys.

Ravi's was a picture of Ken sleeping, his face smooshed into an unknown armrest, his sleeping eyebrows worried and cute. Siana rolled her eyes. Their epic cuddles-affair was an ongoing bromance that Siana had often found herself curious about. Having gotten to know them a little, she decided that what was really going on was that these boys needed more personal love attention than they could really adequately give each other as idols. Whether it was romantic or some kind of individual, caring attention, she couldn't decide, but it made her smile to think that these boys were happy to be each other's "in-the-meantime" playthings on camera.

Hyuk's picture was of himself against a brick background which she thought was of the clock tower in Arachova. His caption, upon translation, read something along the lines of, "Where does the maknae go?"

She surmised that they were each posting pics that were pre-cursors to something more revealing about where they had been all this time.

She was curious to see what Taekwoon might have posted but found Hongbin's first, which was a view of the sea from the end of the jetty in Itea. Although the jetty itself was not in view, she recognised the faint outline of the Pelopponese in the distance. His caption simply read, "by the sea", but she could see a few Korean fans questioning whether he was in Korea or not.

Maybe there was nowhere in Korea where the view of the sea included land opposite, taking up the whole of the horizon. Islands, maybe, or large bays, but they would be very recognisable to locals. She guessed that Hongbin's picture would stir up the most questions as to their whereabouts, especially after a week or so of their absence on social media.

It was her turn to order and she paid for a small paper bag full of four lamb skewers, still sizzling and smelling amazing. Inside the bag there were two small slices of white country bread, purely to mop up the juices from the meat. She walked back to the bus, finding a park bench to sit on nearby, blowing on one of the skewers to cool it down.

The lamb was tender and fatty and she waggled her feet under the bench from pure contentment as she chewed.

She turned back to her phone to search for Taekwoon's account, and found that he had posted a short video of her father's studio console. She smiled, happy to see something that brought her good memories and feelings. He had simply captioned it "sounds happy" and it looked like a loop of his hand pressing the space bar on the keyboard. She tapped on the clip to hear the sound, and was surprised to hear it was a snippet of her father's recording of her for the ad he composed a jingle for. It was a few seconds of silence before a sudden baby chortle which was what started off the ad. Then it would replay, the silence again before the sudden baby noise.

She let it play over and over, smiling inanely at the screen. When it stopped looping, she looked at the caption again, wondering whether he intended some sort of message for her.