And so I waited. And when he didn't write back, didn't call, I was sad. Then upset. The angry. And at some point, I realized that I didn't want him to write back anymore because I felt like I deserved better.
My brother was in town for a couple of days and that took my mind off things, him and partying like I hadn't since college. One drunk night I got weak and actually did call Namjoon, even though I had promised myself I wouldn't. But not only did he not pick up, the phone number was no longer in service. At first, I wasn't sure about it because well, I was drunk and the robot voice on the other side said it in Korean. So I called Jin. He didn't pick up. I stood there somewhere in Brooklyn on my way home and decided that it was already embarrassing enough what I was doing... I might as well call Kookie. He eventually picked up. I couldn't believe he did and had no idea what to say. Maybe it was the alcohol, but his voice sounded nervous. "Hello." "Hey... you picked up." Silence. Maybe he didn't understand. Then a slow "How are you?" "Not good." I blurted out. Silence again and then voices in the background and then: "I am sorry Noona." And then he hung up. I took two deep breaths, but it was coming. I cried my eyes out on the way home, I was incredibly angry.
"I am done. Fuck him. Fuck all of them." I yelled at Lauren when I got home. She had left an hour before me but was still reading in bed. "And we are drinking." Lauren just looked at me. "Are you going to have a breakdown any second or are you actually angry enough to do this?" "Oh, I am angry. I actually believed the asshole, I actually believed he was a decent person. Turns out he is so pathetic that he made me pathetic as well. I am done. I am going to... drink and fuck and eat and... I don't know... do other things until I am not angry anymore and then I will get back to... dealing with my own shit. Fuck him and fuck tree houses and fuck expensive girls." Lauren was just blinking, probably not understanding half of what I was saying. "Gin or Vodka?" "I hate Vodka. So Vodka." She sighed. Got up and we started what turned into the worst/best/most exhausting week of my life. By the end of it, I had friends calling if I was okay because they had seen me, by the end of it I was exhausted and not very proud of myself. But by the end of it, I had also felt about every emotion I could feel. I maybe wasn't over it but it had helped. I expected that to be the end of it or at least I didn't expect anything else to happen when it came to Namjoon. But exactly when I had decided I was done being angry and drunk and partying, when I had spent a whole Saturday sleeping and actually thinking of something else... ARMY had put the puzzle pieces together.
Lauren was the one who found the photo. Because I had stayed as far away of all things BTS as possible. When she came into my room her facial expression actually made me tense up. It wasn't easy to get her shook. "Okay, I have to show you something. And it is not good." She sat down next to me on my bed and put her laptop down in front of me. There it was, a picture someone had taken of me of when I had arrived at JFK after the week in North Carolina. "Yeah, I've seen that." I murmured and shrugged. It wasn't the most flattering picture because I looked tired and my hair was messy, cigarette in one hand, half-empty wine bottle in the other. But there had been worse, somebody once had taken a picture of me when I had gotten my wisdom teeth removed a few years back. This was nothing in comparison. "It's not the picture itself. It's the rest of the thread." "Thread?" "It's on Twitter." No reaction from my side, so Lauren took a deep breath and started scrolling. The next picture was the same one but zoomed in. On my upper body. And then the one after that one of the hem of the sweatshirt. "Yeah, I don't get it." "Okay, I will summarize and not make you read the whole thing. That is the sweatshirt Namjoon gave you, right?" "Yeah?" "Turns out it's not just a black sweatshirt. It is a designer sweatshirt." Still no reaction from me. "It is... a Korean designer brand sweatshirt." Oh no. I knew right then and there where this was going. "Limited edition of 200 pieces." My hand moved to my mouth. "Which apparently Hobi gave Namjoon for his birthday two years ago which was all over the live streams." "Noooooo..."
Lauren scrolled down. Screencaps of the Livestream. Written deductions. "It's not... proof. I could have the same shirt even if it's unlikely..." I murmured, almost hopeful. "There is more."
They had done their homework. Shit that went beyond theories and actually beyond legality. They knew when the picture was taken and compared flight schedules. Somebody had found out which flight Namjoon had been on. And even though I had not been on the same plane, the times lined up with a flight from Asheville to New York. An image of on the hotels Instagram account where Hayoon had stayed, showing him enjoying breakfast. Beneath only comments that read something along the lines of "Army knows" and "Why else would Hayoon be in Middleofnowhere, NC?" The Twitter thread ended in "I know it's none of my business, but this is real."
There was no actual proof. No pictures of us together, nobody had found out about the house in the woods. And still, it was enough for people to freak out. And while some of them just shared the story, others were upset. We only had to scroll down a few responding tweets to spot the first whore comment. In the end, it didn't matter that there was no proof. "Is that..." "Yeah I'm afraid so..." Pictures of me from a few days ago. Drinking. Smoking. Partying. Making out with some bartender. "Wow, Namjoon, classy..." some comment said. And then beneath more pictures. Of my brother and me out somewhere having lunch. "I can't believe he is blind enough to not see that she - literally - is a whore, he is supposed to be the smart one." "Fuck's sake." I whispered. Pictures of me from Highschool, unfortunate Emo haircut and a bit too much cleavage showing. Of course, the video from that award show and "Did Namjoon just low-key flirt with me?" memes that were no longer depicting me as relatable. Just desperate.
I sat there for a while, scrolling through it before Lauren finally closed the laptop. "Enough. It's enough." I couldn't say anything. Shit. Shitshitshhrirhttt. "Call him. I know that is the last thing you want to do. But call him. There must be something his PR team can do." I shook my head. "He changed his phone number." "Then let's call Jin." "No." "Why?" I looked up at her. "I am not going through this again. This will blow over. People will forget. It's not like they are going to find more." "Ollie, this is not just Perez Hilton-shit. This could get ugly. Like harassment ugly." I thought about it for a second. Then shook my head again. "It's done. He can deal with it if he wants to. Or not. And I will deal with it as well. Now, I really don't have anything to hide anymore. I will tell my manager the truth tomorrow but I doubt he will want to respond. Let them rip me apart online. Or send nasty letters to the studio. I am not doing anything. This...will blow over."
We both sighed almost at the same time. "Okay..." Lauren finally said, even though she clearly didn't like the idea. "Just promise me your next boyfriend will be a baker or librarian or maybe a farmer. Never. Fucking. ever. date someone famous again." Sure as hell wouldn't.
It got a lot worse before it got better. Over the next few weeks, I had to change my phone number, Lauren and I had to stay in a hotel for a while, both my parents and my brother got hate mail sent to their work. There were people screaming at me when I got to the studio. I was tired. Management had decided to not react. Because all of these things wouldn't have changed what was happening, only had given reason to assume it was all true for sure. But they helped to keep me save. At the same time, I knew they didn't mind the attention, even though they pretended to be mad at me.
No one reached out. Not Namjoon, not Big Hit, no one. And eventually Army focused on something else. Gradually attention dwindled, but it took almost six months before the main focus in my Instagram comments wasn't Namjoon related anymore. Lauren and I had moved by then, somewhere more expensive with better security. I felt horrible about having put her through all of it. So when BTS got back on tour the following spring and my management asked whether I wanted to interview them on my show - fully aware that it would mean more harassment but also a lot of publicity - I had so so many reasons to say no immediately.
I managed to avoid them even at public events. They had only gotten bigger in the US over time. In the summertime, pretty much exactly a year after I had bumped into them the first time at that event show, we were at the same event and I couldn't just rush off when I saw them. I had to walk past them on a red carpet and knew people would take pictures no matter what I did. So did they. I focused on the door I wanted to get to, pretty suits and haircuts and Jungkook bowing at me slightly only in my perennial vision. Still, I almost felt him next to me the moment I walked past Namjoon. Pretty sure he was looking at me, but I walked past him and all of them, straight into the venue and that was the moment things changed. It hadn't been as bad for a few months at the time already, but then, finally, it got a lot better. BTS won a lot of prizes that night and still, when I went home I felt like I had won that night. Nobody but me cared about it, but finally what everyone else thought of me wasn't as important anymore as what I felt.
I did eventually interview them again, all smiley, all professional. And then we didn't talk after, hardly said goodbye when they left the studio. It would be another three years before I talked to Namjoon in private.