(Guide Us to) A Million Stars

26🔥

As I walked quickly through the open square of Hongdae district, I typed on my phone "Don't play the song!" Then I checked the V Live to see if Tae would check his phone. He didn't.

"Wait!" Tae said to the others, sitting on the couch in the HYBE lounge. "We should celebrate this moment with a drink."

The company building was only a few blocks away so I started to run. Ouch! I stopped short when I felt a light strain in my calf muscle. My stupid leg must not have been completely healed causing me to hobble down the street.

"Who's going to get the drinks?" Jin asked on the V Live.

"We can't drink on camera," Jungkook protested.

"Then we'll say we have a sore throat and we're disinfecting it," Jin suggested. The members howled with laughter. Then they looked at each other.

"Han Ne Myeon Chin Da...Gawi, Bawi, Bo!" they said in unison as they put out rock, paper, and scissors hand gestures.

I heard their voices as I kept moving down the sidewalk. I checked to see if Tae answered my text. Then I sent another one. Moments later still no response. The company was only two blocks away now.

"To our comeback!" Jimin said, raising a bottle of beer.

"Jamsiman! I can't have beer without fried chicken," Yoongi complained.

"Okay. Then we play the song," Namjoon said.

No! Ten minutes later I finally limped to the glass door of the entrance of HYBE. I had to stop three times to sit on a bench before I arrived. When I entered the lobby, I noticed an alert on my phone. Tae texted "Where are you?"

I walked to the reception desk as I answered him. "HYBE lobby. Don't play song!"

After I received a visitor badge, I did a light jog down the hallway toward the lounge where they were doing their V Live. I stopped when Tae appeared.

"Suni! What this is?"

Still out of breath, I answered. "The song...'It Must be Nice'...I just heard it...on the street...a street performer was singing it...it's already a song. I guess I used the same melody." Tae's jaw dropped. "I'm sorry."

He nodded slowly. Then he ran down the hallway in the opposite direction. I leaned against the wall and slid down into a sitting position, resting my tired body. The V Live was still playing on my phone.

"Hajima!" Tae yelled to the other members. I watched him enter the lounge. "Don't play the song!" he said, moving his finger across his neck. BTS stared at him, confusion on their faces.

Namjoon looked into the camera. "Sorry. Technical difficulties. We have to end this V Live but we will see you soon."

***

After apologizing in person to BTS and their producer Pdogg, Tae suggested I go home right away. Chan brought me back to my apartment and for the rest of the day I didn't hear from Tae. Nor the day after that. Nor the day after that. I wanted to crawl into bed and never get out again. I wished with all my might that I had gone back to America with Auntie. I kicked myself for doing something so dumb and wasting BTS' time working and producing a song that was plagiarized.

I did the usual pining-after-someone routine of thinking about Tae, wondering what he was doing, and wondering if he was thinking of me. I had a feeling he would respond eventually, like he did when he wrote "Blue and Gray." Nevertheless, on the second night of not seeing him, I watched some video edits of Tae, played the songs we wrote together on the guitar and piano, and wore his FILA sweatshirt while I cooked dinner as if I were in mourning.