Breakable Heaven

“It’s not gonna kill you,” you mutter into the speaker phone, hollowly satisfied at your own attempt to hide the worry in your voice. The light blinks red on and off, all the while other cars zip past in front of yours in blur after blur after blur. “Hold tight, okay? Throw up if you need to. Please.”

“Hurry, I’m getting too dizzy,” the voice on the other end of the line confesses, “I need to find a place to sit down. I can’t see straight anymore.”

“Just find some security guard near the lobby. I’ll be five minutes at most.” You keep the façade up for a little while longer, and you console yourself that the act is helping Yuri feel better than otherwise—even if a bit self-absorbed of you.

The light turns green and your engine roars to life again. You’d end the call if you could, but Yuri threatening to topple over and pass out keeps you on the line. Instead, you settle for just driving as carefully as the situation allows, your nervousness be damned. You hold the gearshift a bit too tight before you notice and ease off.

“Do you have— urk ” she attempts before cutting herself off to stifle a gag, “fuck, hurry.”

You shift another gear up, recalling your route by the seat of your pants if any speed limits are on the way. “Yeah, I have water. I can’t stop now for anything else you might need but we can drop by a convenience store on the way back.” Your heart thumps against the inside of your ribcage, sending the beating sensation up your neck, trying to dislodge the lump in your throat. “You still there?”

And silence. It unnerves you even more hearing nothing but muted and muffled sounds from the background, not knowing what could’ve ever happened to Yuri herself. You fight down the panic and keep your wits about you: she needs her manager, and her manager is on the way. Her manager can’t help if her manager gets into an accident, and with that thought you ease off the gas just enough.

From the other end of the line, a different voice: “Oppa…?” followed by a shuffling sound then a clearer line, “Oppa, this is Yujin. Unnie’s okay, but she had to lie down.”

“Oh, thank God. Please stay with her, Yujinnie.”

“I’ll do my best, but I can’t stay for long… Where are you? Why did you leave her?”

“She said she’d be alright, and that she’d just get a driver from the organizers to take her back to the hotel…”

“And you were okay with that?”

Even sounding it out now, it didn’t look good; it was a lapse in judgment at best, and a terminable offense and more at worst. In reality, anything could have happened to Yuri: passed out by the stairwell, throwing up her guts in some bathroom, and other things you can’t afford to consider right now. It surprises you that you have enough space in the frazzled environment that is your mind at all for guilt, “Look, I’m sorry, alright? We agreed—”

“No, Oppa, it’s okay. I get it. This must have been tough for her.”

It throws a wrench into your thought process for just a tiny second. “What? What do you mean, ‘tough for her?’ Is something wrong?”

“It’s,” and Yujin hesitates. She spends a few seconds radio-silent, and worry creeps back up your chest. “It's… best to hear it from her. Trust me.”

“Yujin, what does that mean—”

“I have to go, Oppa. Unnie will be fine here. I’m sorry, I have to go.” The line cuts.

~~

“She’s through here,” Youngji says as she leads the way through the maze of corridors. It’s dizzying even without alcohol: the sheer number of greenrooms, the people whizzing back and forth and all around, the red tape you had to tear through to be let in like this. Make a mental note, remember to buy Youngji a soju when you have the chance. If not for her, you’d never have made it this far past every bit of flimsy security between her and anyone willing to put half an ounce of effort into taking advantage of her. So, as you both shove past every other manager and staff member fetching their own idols their things, the stress mounts that yours might not be okay after all, and you start rambling.

“What did she drink? Didn’t anyone stop her? Where’s Yujin?”

“Oppa, now’s not the time for any of that. I’m the one panicking. You have to keep a cool head.”

She stops in front of some nondescript door, and in one and a half swift motions, she reaches and turns the knob. You rush in even before Youngji opens it all the way, and in the dressing room you find Yuri, red in the face as can be, with watery eyes to match. She lies on her side, her arm dangling off the edge of the sofa, and gagging lightly every few seconds—and you swear you’ve never seen her in worse condition.

“ Fuck,” you gasp under your breath, and you try waking her. She stirs lightly, but falls back again and again into unconsciousness. You knew she could take her alcohol, but only so much, and by the looks of it, Yuri’s fighting for her life.

“I’ll leave you to her. Take care of her, Oppa. Yujin’s really worried.” You hear Youngji from behind but can’t afford to turn and face her. Instead, all you hear is the door creak as she abandons it, while a draft invades the room and sends shivers through Yuri’s vulnerable form.

You take her into your arms, spending half a second contemplating how she’s so heavy and light at the same time. You know full-well how complicated she can be, and there were always these moments you didn’t exactly see eye to eye, but you never needed to; you were only doing your job, she was doing hers, and God forbid you got too close—the both of you made sure you never did.

“Oppa…?” Yuri finally says. Pity grows in your chest: the world is spinning around her and what she wakes up to is being shaken up and down with every footstep you take zipping back to the car. Her grip tightens on your jacket as she buries her face in your neck, and you feel a wetness forming on your collar from her tears or saliva or whatever else you can’t afford to let distract you.

“We’re almost at the car, Yuri. I’ll drive gentle on the way back, okay? I promise.”

“It’s not that— urk —I’m having a hard… time…”

“I know, I know. I’m so sorry. I won’t ever leave you again.”

“You're… not listening,” she says in between sobs. She wipes her tears on your shoulder, and it only makes you feel worse. You can’t tell her what she wants to hear: that everything will be okay, that things will settle themselves, that she’s going to be fine eventually. You can’t promise any of that without breaking down the false heaven of barriers and walls between a manager and idol.

“No skinship, I know that, but can’t we make an exception just this once?” You fail to hide the desperation in your voice; it betrays your feeble attempt at keeping stoic and reliable like she knows you to be, like she needs you to be right now.

“ No, we can't… I—” and she gags again, a bad one this time, and you stop in your tracks. You set her down easy right up against a pillar, but she never lets go of you. She folds in half, trying her hardest at either keeping the contents of her gut or pushing it out, you can’t tell. At this moment you couldn’t care less about the vomit about to wash out of the front of your clothes—she has to be okay.

Yuri fights it back down though, and once she does, she unfolds herself and leans with her back flat against the cold, rough concrete pillar. She breathes heavy, and her face is even redder now; you take your handkerchief and start blotting the sweat from her forehead, cheeks, neck, shoulders. Her eyes are shut tight again, after a moment of silence and you trying your best not to do anything else wrong.

“Oppa, just… take me home. I don’t want to spend any more time…”

“Alright, let’s go. Don’t walk. I got you.” You pick her up again, draping her against your front so she stays upright.

“You’re too much, Oppa… Thank you.” She sinks down to your shoulder, so you let her breathe. You bet she doesn’t even notice you plopping her into the passenger seat and buckling her up, nor starting the car and driving off into the night. Thank God she’s resting.

~~

You always did find this song cheesy, but it’s the one thing you can let yourself play on the radio without her waking up nor you nodding off right beside her. She breathes slow and deep through her nose, eyes shut like the world would steady around her if she waited long enough. Every so often, she’d take a glance out the window—your side’s window—trying to make sense of the way things are and how she got herself in a situation like this. And you can’t really blame her.

“Yujin told me you were having a hard time?” You shift a gear lower, with much less force and grip, and it’s funny how you only notice these things when she does. She stares at your hand wrapped loosely around the gearshift, and the radio playing that stupid song she looks like she hates too.

It’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard her sing, “If I lay here… if I just lay here.” She fiddles with her seatbelt, forcing back a gag every once in a while. Put a hand on hers, and she wraps the other one over yours. “I’m okay, Oppa,” Yuri breezes as if saying it like that will make it true, but you know better. It’s the way she doesn’t meet your eyes, how her hands try to busy themselves without her noticing, how she turns away from you without anywhere or anything else to pretend to be distracted by. Plus, she never was a good liar, especially not with the contents of her stomach threatening her every five seconds.

But, all things said and done, believe her anyway. “Alright,” you turn the car right, “just take it easy.” Her fingers wrap around yours tighter as the car sways, as the sky shifts above her, as the star that she chose to anchor her slides across the inky black above. Her head spins and sways along with the car, and her stomach decides it was too much.

Yuri’s hand zips to your knee, “Pull over, please,” suddenly folding forward as a furious grumble sounds out from her gut. A burp escapes her, and instead of the odor of digested food like you expect, it’s the sharp stench of a stomach full of nothing but acid. Fuck.

You swerve to the right, nearly sending your car right off the asphalt, and halting just in the nick of time before it skids off the road. You unlock the passenger side door just as she reaches to tear off the handle, and once it flies open, she lets out a horrid retching out the side of the car. Your own door swings open and you rush over to her side, keeping an eye on her as close as you can. She gags repeatedly in a sinister sort of rhythm, while her last five hours’ worth of food and drink escapes her the wrong way—and it’s not much food.

She tries sitting back up, catching her breath while clutching her stomach and placing a hand on her chest. Her forehead and shoulders are dotted with beads of sweat while she wheezes and fights back more of her vomit. Yuri’s face seemingly can’t decide between flushing and paling, attempting and failing at both. Her eyes are shut as tight as possible to steady the world spinning around her, but with her fatigue and her dismal state of non-sobriety, it only does so much.

“Okay, done? Let it all out if you’re not.” You place a reassuring hand on her wrist now, but immediately you feel she’s cold to the touch. Yuri’s hand is moist with sweat, and with the way her head lolls to the side, she looks like she’s either seen a ghost or is halfway to being one.

“Just… drive…” she mutters, fighting back every other gag from reaching farther up her throat, “don’t worry… about the cleaning fee…”

“You know I’m not worried about that.” Take her in your arms, carry her into the back seat. It’s not much, but the jacket you hurriedly take off is the closest thing to a pillow you can muster. Place it gently underneath her head, and pat her hair to try and get her to calm down. It’s at this moment you think what you’d give to just take all her pain away right now, to stand in her place so she just gets a break from anything and everything that haunts her.

“Throw up if you want. You’re right; company handles the cleaning fee. Just don’t keep it in. Anything but that.” You’re not exactly sure if she heard—her labored breathing and tiny jerks as she fights back hard against her dizziness are probably the only things she can pay attention to right now.

You realize too late, much too late, that she’s crying; a sniffle escapes her while you notice she’s wiping her forehead less than her eyes. A different kind of concern rises in your chest, and an ugly sort of fear to go along with it. What’s wrong with her, how could you not notice everything she’s been keeping hidden?