What Does That Spell?

It’s silent. It’s awfully silent.

Between the pounding of your heart and the cracks in her breath amidst the empty VIP lounge, with each passing minute, you both can feel it—the tension. The ticket lodged between the glistening folds of her Japanese passport flash you the time of departure like a taunt. Ten-thirty-five. Barely three hours after their concert. Barely two hours after you had gotten to see her again in person for the first time in years. Barely an our after she said she wanted some time to ‘just talk’.

Barely a minute since she hit you with that question.

You stare at her dry lips, at the way it quivers inwards like she’s pulling back a thought. You can imagine her asking you that damn question again in your head.

“Do you think … this is going to work out? For … for us? In the future?”

The thought of it alone is more than enough to freeze the blood in your veins. You still get stiff when you recall the way your face warped from relief after seeing your girlfriend again in the flesh, then into confusion when you began to wonder where this was all coming from, and finally into dread when you finally realized where this discussion might be headed.

What was that supposed to mean? What does that spell for your relationship?

You wish it was that easy. You really wish it could be that simple. To just talk to her. To just ask her directly about it. To confront her and her unspoken fears and insecurities about your long-distance relationship.

But the words don’t come out. You can’t find it in you to scrape them from the pit of your chest and lay them bare before her. She doesn’t seem like she wants to breach the subject either—not again. Whenever your eyes met since she popped the question, you could tell from the way she darts her gaze away within milliseconds that she just wanted to instigate. She was hoping you would progress it.

Did she really think you—let alone anyone—could have prepared for something like this?

You’re happy enough as it is. You have many things to be thankful for.

You’re glad you managed to save up enough money to attend their concert tonight—SVIP tickets. Bougie little shit. She offers to not just get you a free ticket to the soundcheck, but also a special backstage pass so you could hang out with her and the other members during the breaks and lulls of their performances. But you told her some cheesy and cringey spiel about wanting to ‘earn your way’ to be by her side when she’s on the stage. So she let you do it your way.

You’re relieved that your little gambit after the concert paid off. The moment she told you that the flight was almost immediately after their concert, you began planning for a means of escape. You knew it would be difficult to reach her, so you pulled some strings, which included buying a cheap ticket to South Korea, bribing the staff in charge of the lounge areas, and sending her a script meant for her manager to allow her to be excused for a moment before their departure. It was hard enough for her to come up with bullshit reasons for her other members, but you’re just glad it worked.

But most of all, you’re glad that she’s with you. Really with you right now.

Leaning into your stiff body planted firmly against the soft padded cushions of the lounge couch, she’s pressing her cheek between the folds of your lap, holding onto the stretch of leg between your hip and knee, allowing you to caress the stray strands of her hair away from her face, Naoi Rei acts as if nothing had just happened between you two.

As if you two hadn’t soft-launched your break up.

There’s a whole self-service buffet in front of you two: pastries, all-day breakfast, specialty items from the local cuisine, finger foods, light snacks. There’s even a cocktail bar stocking one of her favorite drinks. But she doesn’t budge. And neither do you.

You know you should probably get some food for her—even feed her if you have to. You didn’t want to bring it up before whenever you two got on video call, and you weren’t even sure if it was real or if it was all just in your head, but you couldn’t help but notice the amount of weight she’s losing. One of your hands crests over her bare thighs and squeezes it in comfort. Your other hand dangles just above her laying face and pokes a finger into her cheek to test its plushness. Thankfully she hasn’t gotten too skinny, but it concerns you. Greatly. And you should probably be a decent boyfriend anyway and get her a bite or two to help her recharge after her concert.

And yet, you still find yourself motionless by her side, halfway between wanting to embrace her tightly and helping her sit up so you can walk out and run as far away from the airport as possible.

You shut your eyes and let out a sigh so deep that it rumbles in your stomach, alerting her.

She shifts, swapping from her previous fixation—the F1 race on one of the TVs that she knows absolutely nothing about—and instead now looks up at you. 

You try your best not to look at the sulk in her eyes, at the pale of her cheeks, at the longing in her pout. You feel your pettiness bubble up to the surface. She was the one who hinted at breaking up, so why should you feel any pity towards her?

But who are you kidding? One glimpse of her and your knees buckle. Soon, you find yourself staring right back at her from above.

You don’t know what to say, and that’s probably part of the problem. You gather she doesn’t know what to tell you either. You’re not really a person of many words. You were never verbose nor well-spoken enough growing up. You just let things happen and left the thoughts alone to simmer in your head. So what were you supposed to do now? What were you supposed to say now?

Should you circle back to the topic? Bring it up again? Raise your concern? That seems very risky. Maybe she already forgot about her break up idea. If so, then reminding her about it would just place it back into the forefront of her mind and develop the thought further.

Should you maybe break the ice somehow at least and try to lighten the mood? Whether or not she’s still actively thinking about the question she asked you—and your lack of a decent intelligible response—you should at least try to support her right? Try to support her? You can only imagine how physically exhausted she must be right now. The setlist they had for tonight’s concert was insane and afforded Rei and the other girls little to no breaks. Maybe being silly for a bit to lift her spirits isn’t such a bad ieda.

Should you maybe just … let it be?

Among the multitude of thoughts swimming around in your head, you let that line of thinking simmer the longest before entertaining it further.

You avoid her gaze for this one, and you swear to god you could hear her whine because of it.

What if you just let it be?

The last time you saw Rei in person was back in 2024, when she came to your area for a second time following their group’s first world tour. You two were more lovestruck back then. More carried by passion. More limited through the view of each of your own rose-tinted glasses. You didn’t care if she was only around for two days. You didn’t care if you could only have her for an hour after their fan meet on the evening before the concert proper. You didn’t care about what you’d both do, or say, or profess to each other when you could finally meet again. You just let your emotions take control and wash over you, and you both found yourselves forming the treasured memory of nearly falling down the stairs of her hotel’s fire escape because she wouldn’t let go of your face to stop kissing you for even just a second—even if it could cost her her life.

And now?

Now you had more time. More leeway. More comfort. More freedom. And yet you both have done less with each other this year than you did two years ago. Hell—you could even argue that you both have done way less together tonight than you normally did over voice or video call. You swear you had everything planned down to a tee, calculated everything for your plan to be executed successfully, refined all the different scripts you had in mind for what you’d finally tell her once you were with her again face-to-face. But none of it mattered in the end, did it? She came into tonight with something else on her mind.

So what if you just let it be?

What if you just allowed yourself a final moment of respite with her? One last chance to just hold her intimately like this—like you are right now—in the silence of the lounge. No cameras. No fans. No overprotective manager or nosey members to be wary of. Just the two of you. Not as idol and fan. Not as random strangers who matched on a whim using a silly dating app. Not as oppa and dongsaeng. Just boyfriend and girlfriend.

What if you just let her go?

You wanted this relationship to last. You really did. You still do, in fact. Even after all the doubt that she casted deep within the well of your being. It shattered you. Collapsed you into yourself. Weighed down on you from start to finish. But you held onto hope. You believed that one day, your monthly photo-journal compilations on Google Drive would turn into a collage of physical photos scattered across the space of your soon-to-be shared apartment. That one day, your weekly dates across the screen would spill over into reality, and you could finally take her out around the fancier parts of town for Saturdates or Sundates—whenever she was more free. That one day, your nightly calls in bed that lasted until someone passes out or cries themselves to sleep would culminate with you both falling asleep and waking up next to each other in the same shared bed. 

But as those words echo in your head like the toll of the dead, you can’t help but wonder if those memories? Those wishes? Those hopes and dreams of yours? Were all just a veil for you to hide from the reality of the situation.

She’s an idol. She’s meant for the stage, and the limelight, and the fame. She’s meant to be loved by many—more than just you. And you? You’re just a normal dude trying to live paycheck to paycheck. Just outrunning life before it starts to get ahold of you. Just … trying to chase after her and finally merge onto her path as well.

But who are you kidding? That’s never going to happen. Rei’s never giving up on being an idol. And you are never going to be within her league in your lifetime.

So, you return to the thought. That damn ever-present thought.

What if you just let her go?

It’s easier that way, isn’t it? After all, it saves you the impending heartbreak that’s looming over you like a hurricane in the horizon. It saves you all the messy bits. It saves you from taking longer to move on.

“Move on?”

You flinch, glance slowly back down at her until you’re staring at her similarly confused expression, and raise a brow. “What did you say?”

“Move on?” she asks again, tapping a finger now against your knee. “You were writing it. On my body. ‘Move on’.”

You didn’t notice it, but Rei’s right. The hand that you unknowingly moved down towards your waist had its pointer stretched forward as if it was tracing something against her skin.

“Sorry, I was just … thinking. About things,” you feign, opting to go with the first option—to not talk about it.

Rei nods, cheek grazing gently against your jeans. “Can you guess what this spells?”

With her own finger, she mimics your writing and actually attempts to write something across your thigh. At first, you couldn’t really tell what it is. But after the third attempt, you stopped comparing it to morse code and instead tried to treat it like brushstrokes of a pen.