It Takes Two (Kim Namjoon)

Flew

She paced. She saw him. The tips of his ears, the back of his neck, the tense set of his jaw, and she knew she was in trouble—

"Hey."

I looked up from the pages, snapped out of the narrative. Namjoon was ducking his head to see me better on the dark plane.

"Hi," I finally said back after too many seconds.

"Can I sit?"

I didn't say no, which he took as a yes. He sat in what would've been Hanuel's aisle seat if it weren't for the flu. Luckily our trip overseas had been quick, and we would be back in Korea in a few hours.

"Are you fighting with someone?" I couldn't imagine why else he was here. We only spent time alone during our writing sessions, where he would give me sentences to write and I would roll my eyes and write Kim Namjoon is the most handsome leader of any boyband in Korea, but we hadn't had one of those in the past week, and the plane wasn't exactly big enough to try now (or at least, my seat wasn't—I was fairly sure Seokjin and Taehyung had somehow sweet-talked the boys up into first class).

"No. I can't just see you?"

I bit my lip, thinking. I'd never seen Namjoon like this before. He had a soft, open curiosity on his face that never showed up around the other boys. I chalked it up to the pressurized cabin air, and gave him a small smile. "Of course." My eyes drifted back to my novel.

"What's that?"

I side-eyed him, tamping a flair of annoyance. "A book."

"From your huge bookcase?"

I nodded, still trying to absorb the sentences. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at multi-tasking.

"Which one?"

"Nothing you've read, I'm sure."

"I read plenty, even if I don't have as many books at the apartments as you do."

I started at his sharp, loud tone, much stronger than the whispers we'd been using. I was surprised to see him so upset, with his eyebrows pushed together over his forehead and his mouth pouted out.

"Sorry, oppa. That's not what I meant at all." I showed him the cover and title of the book. "It's just a kid's book to help me read better. I would assume you read bigger stuff."

"Like?"

I thought about what I knew of the lyrics that Namjoon had written. "Verne. Melville. Dumas. The classics. Or something international. I've read that you're a big fan of Murakami. I haven't had the chance to read anything of his yet."

"Murakami aside—the classics. You haven't read them?"

I shook my head. "I could never bring myself to finish. I was always more of a historical romance fan myself."

"What did you read?"

"Austen. Brontë. Hugo. Tolstoy."

"Hugo and Tolstoy? They're not very romantic."

"Not between people, you're right. Hugo changed me first, because he wrote a love story to his country. You can tell how he cared for it and wanted to see it improve. He made me conscious of how American I am and how Mexican I am, and he made me put France on my list of travel destinations." I met Namjoon's gaze, well aware of the dreamy expression on my face. "It was the first time I fell in love with another country that I didn't have some direct genetic connection to."

"You like history?" He smiled as he talked, and leaned in to hear my response better.

I should've kept my thoughts to myself, should have maintained the careful professional boundaries that prevented either of us from knowing too much about the other. "Love it. I wanted to be a history teacher as a little girl."