A/N: Shout-out to InHwa, KLSoEul, & LilisLittleRose for reviewing part of this chapter for me. You guys are the best! :)
Fellow SoEul shippers...Sorry...I know I'm killing off my own OTP. :(
Italics are a flashback.
Yi Jeong had texted Ga Eul earlier in the week to say that he wanted to do a video call with her on Friday, and Ga Eul had been looking forward to it ever since. She didn't get to talk to Yi Jeong as often these days and hadn't been able to talk to him much for the past year, but she knew it was the last year of his program, and he was working hard to complete his final projects, plus fulfill his responsibilities for his internship, plus attend high society art functions at the request of his family. There was a lot on his plate, so Ga Eul tried to be understanding and supportive and not bother him too much. They still had video calls once or twice a month, and while it wasn't the once or twice a week that she'd become accustomed to when he first moved to Sweden, Ga Eul considered it better than nothing. Besides, soon Yi Jeong would be moving back to Korea, and they could pick up where they had left off four years before, only this time being closer as friends and—hopefully—something more.
At ten minutes till the time of their call, Ga Eul seated herself at the desk in her bedroom and stuck in her pink earbuds. At five minutes till their call, she brushed her hair out of her face and double checked that she didn't have anything stuck in her teeth. When they'd talked often, she'd gotten so comfortable that she'd become almost lazy in her appearance, but now that their chats were more infrequent, she'd gone back to dressing herself up for them. Almost like they were dates. Tonight she wore a red dress with a black cardigan over it and a new red headband that Jan Di had gifted her for her birthday.
Ga Eul couldn't wait to go on a real date with Yi Jeong when he returned. She bit her lip to stop herself from grinning idiotically yet rubbed her feet together in anticipation. Two more months. Only two more months until he came back. She'd made it through almost an entire four years, and she'd promised herself that the first time she saw him when he returned, she'd be brave enough to do what she hadn't done in his studio the night her stupid phone had rang.
She was going to kiss him.
Ga Eul couldn't help the smile that spread across her face as she imagined Yi Jeong taking her into his arms like he did the night she'd almost fallen on the clay. He would lean in really slowly like he'd done before, but this time their lips would touch and—
A call was incoming on her computer screen. Ga Eul jumped, realizing she'd zoned out, and connected through to Yi Jeong quickly. His profile picture showed his upper half poised casually in front of a Swedish art museum; he was dressed in one of his impeccable suits. So handsome, with an infectious smile.
Ga Eul couldn't help but return the smile, even if it was a picture; then the computer image shifted, and the real Yi Jeong greeted her from the other side of the screen, lounging in a black dress shirt and dark jeans.
"Hi, Ga Eul-yang," he said. "I hope I'm not keeping you up too late."
"Oh no, not at all, Yi Jeong Sunbae. Did you have a good morning class?"
Yi Jeong nodded.
"What about you? Are you excited to be graduating soon?"
Ga Eul nodded enthusiastically.
"I'll be glad to start teaching for real next year," she assured him.
"You should ask Jun Pyo for a recommendation at Shinhwa."
Ga Eul laughed.
"It's okay. I'm fine wherever I get placed. Everyone needs to learn."
"Ah, of course. You commoners and your endless fight for equality," Yi Jeong teased.
"I'm serious."
"I know." Yi Jeong smiled, and it was a fond type of smile that made Ga Eul feel warm down to her toes. Her mind went blank for a second, but when her thoughts returned to her, she decided to be brave and ask what she wanted to ask.
"So...do you know the exact date you'll be coming back? I was thinking we could plan you a welcome back party. I mean, I know you'll have a fancy one, but this could be a smaller one with the F4 and me and Jan Di. We could take a trip somewhere, even. Gu Jun Pyo is coming back soon too, right?"
Ga Eul waited for Yi Jeong to confirm that Jun Pyo was coming back or to answer her question about his own arrival date. She waited and waited, but he didn't say anything for a long moment. His perfect composure cracked, and he looked troubled for a split second. Only for a second, but Ga Eul saw it. She wondered what it meant. A sharp sense of foreboding curdled in her stomach. When he began speaking again, her heart sunk despite the luminous smile he flashed her.
"Actually, there's something I wanted to talk to you about. That's why I asked to do a call. The thing is, it's sort of a secret. I haven't even told the guys yet." He gave her a conspiratorial look that made her stomach flip.
"Oh?" she asked. A secret? Something he hadn't told the F4? But he wanted to tell her? Ga Eul couldn't help but smile in return. She shook off the bad feeling she'd had a few seconds before. If it was something he wanted her to know first, then they must have gotten really close, even with the distance. Now that they would be in the same country again, it would only be natural for them to—
"I got an opportunity to further my studies in Sweden, so I won't be coming back to Korea, not for a few years still. But this is good news." He emphasized the phrase 'good news.' "Do you know of Hans Friberg?" Yi Jeong asked—an apparently rhetorical question because he plowed on. "I've been invited to be his apprentice for two, maybe three, years. It's a great opportunity for me to learn from one of the best European ceramic artists and also for me to continue to cultivate artistic relationships abroad. You're one of my best friends, and you were the one who made me believe I could do pottery again, so I wanted you to know first."
Cultivate artistic relationships abroad?
Ga Eul choked down the sentence that belonged in a magazine interview.
For two years? Two more years? At least?
That was it? That was all he was going to say? He was just going to smile and brush over the fact that she'd obviously been awaiting his return for four years, that she'd been thinking about a welcome home party for him?
Yi Jeong kept talking about the apprenticeship, about the pieces he'd been working on for his last university exhibition, about moving into his new residence at the end of the month, but Ga Eul only caught bits and pieces of it. She'd never felt so far removed from him. She'd always been happy about his accomplishments—she wanted to be happy for him about this—but she couldn't bring herself to smile, only to stare at him as he rambled on like he couldn't get the words out fast enough.
"Ga Eul-yang, you know I couldn't have done this without you, right?" he said at one point, with such an earnest look on his face that Ga Eul wanted to smack it off of him. How dare he look at her like he cared.
'You know I couldn't have done this without you.'
'I couldn't have done this without you.'
His words rang hollow in her ears.
What the hell was she supposed to say to that?
Of course, she wanted him to have great artistic opportunities, but...
She'd waited on him.
She loved him.
And now he was going back on his promise to her because she'd helped him when here she'd thought he'd kept in touch with her because he cared about her, because he wanted the same things as her. But maybe he'd only been taking advantage of her attachment to him, using her as his personal cheerleader. Maybe his promise hadn't held the same weight to him as it did to her. Maybe he didn't even remember his promise to her. Maybe all the moments between them that she thought were special hadn't affected him in the same way. Maybe she'd imagined that his endless teasing and secretive smiles and their inside jokes and vague future plans were indicative of something more than friendship. It wasn't that she was his girlfriend—she wasn't; she knew that; she knew she had no real, official claim on him—but she'd thought they had an understanding of sorts. She'd thought that if he had any friend that was a girl who was close enough to him to be his girlfriend, it would have been her. But it was true that he'd never said it—that he liked her that way, that he wanted to be with her that way. He'd never really said it. So she had never said it either, afraid to shatter what fragile hope she'd had.
Maybe her dreams were too small for him after all. Maybe finding a soulmate was an insignificant thing in his eyes compared to being an accomplished international artist.
'I couldn't have done this without you.'
'Yeah, right,' Ga Eul thought. 'It looks like you'll be doing plenty of things without me from now on.'
Ga Eul said none of these things out loud. She listened numbly for the rest of the call, then made some dumb excuse to hang up. The tears didn't come automatically—perhaps her brain was still processing—but when they did come, they didn't stop for months.
It had been a mistake to come home for the Lunar New Year holidays, that long five-day weekend before school began in earnest. Not that Ga Eul didn't love and respect her parents or that she could have gotten out of visiting them, but sleeping in her old bedroom, the room where she'd had every conversation with Yi Jeong right up until the end of their non-relationship, was a mistake.
She wasn't still in love with Yi Jeong. In fact, if it were up to her, she would live the rest of her life without seeing his face. But the pain of feeling kicked aside, of feeling not good enough, had resurfaced, and it was gnashing its contemptuous teeth.
After that painful video call, there had been a few uncomfortable attempts at communication between Ga Eul and Yi Jeong, mostly from Ga Eul's side as she tried to make sense of what Yi Jeong was doing, but their conversations were stilted and tense, and she'd gotten almost no answers from her inquiries. The most Yi Jeong said on the subject of 'them' was to—once again, in the most awkward fashion possible—wish her good luck finding her 'soulmate in Korea.' In the end, she'd felt like Yi Jeong wanted to avoid her—he'd returned her texts later and later and her calls barely at all, claiming to be busy—so she'd stopped trying. Within a few short months, their relationship had tapered off like it had never been there to begin with, and the sudden nothingness where so much something had been struck Ga Eul like metal striking bone.
For the longest time, she'd avoided any place that reminded her of Yi Jeong. She still hadn't gone ice skating since her last year of college, and that had been three years ago. But last year she'd made some progress, even before she'd met Rang. Prior to the Lunar New Year, she'd made herself get rid of any So Yi Jeong memorabilia, even the handkerchief he'd given her at Jan Di's swimming retirement ceremony. Her mother always said that material things can keep the spirit from moving on, so along with cleaning out her old clothes, Ga Eul had orchestrated a full-on So Yi Jeong exorcism. Was that why she had met Rang only three months later?
It was certainly something to ponder.
Lately, in Ga Eul's darker moments, she'd been wondering if Rang could erase her memories of Yi Jeong. Like maybe that was the last hold Yi Jeong had on her, and if she could clean him out of her mind in the same way that she'd thrown out his stuff, she would finally be free of his influence.
Rang probably wouldn't mind ridding her sort-of-ex from her mind if she asked him. Knowing his possessive streak, he'd probably leap at the chance.
And to hell with Yi Jeong. He didn't deserve to live in her memories.
But no. No. What was she thinking? She couldn't erase a person from her head like they were chalk on a blackboard.
This is a horrible way to start the new year, Ga Eul, she scolded herself. Stop thinking about the past.
But Ga Eul wasn't trying to think about the past; the past just wouldn't leave her alone.
Currently, Ga Eul was lying flat on her back on her childhood bed, wide awake at three in the morning. She hadn't been able to fall asleep before one o'clock for the past two weeks, but tonight her restlessness was at an all-time high. At first, she'd blamed her inability to sleep on how late she'd been staying up during her break, but deep down, she'd known she was lying to herself, and the fact that her body still wasn't remotely adjusting to her new sleep schedule only confirmed that the problem had less to do with her circadian rhythm and more to do with Ga Eul's long-buried feelings of abandonment and betrayal that Rang had stirred up during that argument in his apartment.
In her love-addled innocence, she hadn't thought too hard about how much power Yi Jeong had over her—over her emotions, over the trajectory of her life—until he blew up all her hopes and plans for the future like they were ceramics he could so easily crush with a hammer, and she'd had to rebuild herself, piece by piece. Even now, she wasn't whole; she felt like a vase that had been glued back together, but there were parts missing, hidden under the tables and chairs or maybe swept out with the trash to where she couldn't find them ever again. Yes, she was a vase, and she'd thought after going through the fire that the worst was over. But now she had cracks—cracks where water leaked out, cracks an appraising eye would find ugly and devaluing.
She didn't know where her missing pieces were. She only knew that the girl she'd been in high school—the one who could trust with abandon, the one who could love open-heartedly, the one who was loyal to a fault—didn't exist anymore.
Maybe it was a good thing that she'd grown up. Obviously, it didn't pay to be so naive. But still, she hated that besides everything else he'd done to her, Yi Jeong had shattered her sense of self, and he'd made her afraid to have relationships with other people. And now, he'd made her afraid of Rang.
Lee Rang. The first person she'd felt anything for since her college days. At first, she'd been angry because he'd deceived her; now she was simply terrified because despite everything he'd done, she still wanted him in her life so badly. And it wasn't that she was overlooking or excusing his actions; she'd grown to like his disregard for rules, his constant mischeviousness, his manic behavior, his need to have everything fast and now, his casual condescension towards humanity, his overattachment to her, his unrepentant attitude towards everything he did except hurting the people he loved, his protectiveness of the people he loved...and yes, his special fox powers. She'd decided she liked all of those too.
She liked the cardigan he'd given her and the necklace even though she hadn't worn it recently.
God, she even liked the creepy way he smiled sometimes, like he was about to have someone's livers for lunch. For some reason, it was that smile of his that made her laugh the most. Maybe because she knew he wouldn't hurt her with that smile, that he was always only teasing her.
After Yi Jeong, she'd thought she didn't want drama in her next relationship—she didn't want anyone flashy or self-important or problematic—just someone honest and dependable and caring and good. But Rang was honest—in his own way—and dependable—at least, in ways that mattered—and caring—towards her and whoever he considered family—without being good in the most moral sense.
Ga Eul thought he was perfect in all his imperfectness. There was no one like him.
But that was the exact same way she'd felt about Yi Jeong, and she couldn't help but remember how that had turned out. She couldn't help but draw parallels between how she wanted to lean on Rang when she didn't feel well or when she was scared or lonely and how she'd leaned on Yi Jeong during those times he'd been protective of her. She couldn't help but compare the rapturous feeling she experienced whenever Rang was around to her giddiness whenever Yi Jeong had smiled at her.
She was falling again—falling fast and hard—but the butterflies in her stomach weren't butterflies anymore; her stomach churned like she'd eaten something spoiled.
The thing was, even if the feelings were the same, this wasn't remotely the same situation. If Ga Eul got her heart broken again, it was going to hurt so much worse the second time. Ga Eul had been willing to take any little scrap of affection Yi Jeong threw at her, but anything Yi Jeong had done, Rang had already magnified it ten—maybe a hundred—times over. Maybe she'd wasted four years of her life on Yi Jeong, but once the smoke had cleared, she'd seen that there wasn't much to miss. They'd never gone on a real date. They'd never kissed. They'd never held hands. They'd never cuddled. She couldn't depend on Yi Jeong to take her places or comfort her when she was upset. It was just...They just laughed together and teased each other. It was more of a relationship than Ga Eul had ever had up to that point in her life, but it was still a shallow one, all things considered. She could see that now. Rang wasn't even fully human—he didn't even like humans, and he found human dating customs tiresome and pointless—yet he did a much better job at being a human boyfriend than Yi Jeong had ever tried to do. He'd even done not one but three of the items on her list, and she hadn't expected that. Rang made Ga Eul feel so cared for, so noticed, and for a month, she'd eaten it up like someone starved presented with a banquet. Now, even though Rang was definitely the more obsessive one between them, she felt like she was going through withdrawal, and she needed her nine-tailed fox fix. He was the one who'd suggested that they see each other every day, and he was the one who'd wanted her to move in with him, but some of his insanity must have rubbed off on her. Every day for the past week when she'd had a long day at work, she'd wished she could see Rang afterwards, even if it was only long enough to get a hug. It was almost enough to make her regret not moving in with him.
This, too, was terrifying.
Because Ga Eul didn't have any special powers. She didn't even have regular powers—things like money and status and seductiveness or cleverness and coldness and ruthlessness. So, in a desperate attempt to regain some control over the situation, she'd made a list and rules—things that helped her take charge in the classroom if not in real life. On the surface, the rules were designed to force Rang to spend time with other people and hopefully calm the intensity of his obsession with her a bit. But the rules were also designed to force Rang into Ga Eul's game so she wouldn't be playing his.
The thing was, she'd wanted to let Rang come up to her apartment on Saturday. She could tell he was being uncharacteristically patient with her; he was trying to do things she liked. Even when she'd cut their date short and requested to see him again on the following Saturday, he hadn't protested. He'd looked a bit winded, sure, but he'd honored her wishes. If that didn't show that he cared about her, she didn't know what would.
But Ga Eul had stuck to her stupid rules—she was still sticking to them—because they made her feel safer, even though she knew Rang must be disappointed and maybe a little hurt by them. And because Ga Eul was not naturally cold or clever or ruthless, this also made her sick to her stomach, even if Rang had told her to defend herself. What was it he had said?
If someone bites you, you should bite them back, not stand around holding out your arm so they can bite you again.
The thing was, on the one hand, she wouldn't mind if he bit her again one day, just for the pleasure of being near him longer. This was the part of her that had asked Rang to bite her and cut her and suck her blood. This was the part of her that liked his claws caging her throat. This was the part of her that Yi Jeong had latched onto and sucked bone dry.
On the other hand, she was tired of being bitten, tired of being small, tired of being as powerless as she was with that filthy man's hand on her mouth as he dragged her into an alley. She was paralyzed by fear, as paralyzed as she'd been in that moment. As desperate for control. As weak.
It was a horrible way to start the new year.
