one day

twenty-four

They're on a break during filming Hard Carry 2.5. Jaebeom has just finished his phone call with Yugyeom, as he sits on the side of the street eating Burger King with Mark, when his personal phone rings. "It's her." He whispers to Mark. "Can I take this call?" He asks the staff, and they accept, turning off their cameras.

"We'll check the cameras in your car, so head there when you're finished." One of the crew members states and Jaebeom thanks them.

"Hey, what's up?" He questions, "We have to make this quick."

"Are you still filming?" Seulgi asks from the receiving end.

"Hi Seulgi!" Mark greets happily.

"She says hello," Jaebeom answers, "yeah. We're chasing the rat known as Youngjae and we almost caught him during the second round but he used one of his advantages... so now we're eating and thinking of the next clue."

"Oh? Sounds fun!"

"I guess... the clue was a photo of Jo Sungmo, and instead of thinking of plum juice or To Heaven, I honestly thought about when we filmed PLOF together." Jaebeom admits, "but now we know it was hinting at a snack bar instead. We're in no rush though. Mark and I kind of gave up." Jaebeom shrugs, "how's practice?"

"Tiring, we filmed one of the vcr for the concert today and we're going to run through some more choreography. I was just calling you since I had time, but you're busy too."

"Mhm.. I'll call you tonight though? Or at least text you when I'm done filming so you can call me when you have time."

"Okay... sounds good."

"I miss you."

"I miss you too! I'll talk to you soon... and tell Mark that Wendy say hi."

"Okay, bye bye~"

It's been a rough couple of weeks to be honest. Seulgi kind of disappeared again, thanks to La Rouge coming up and Jaebeom has been busy with Got7 too. They haven't had much time together and it's starting to affect him more than her. He admitted to his fans that he's human, just like them, and there are times where he can't force his happiness when he's not happy. It happens to everyone, and it's happening to him now.

Seulgi is his escape. His time with her is usually chill time, where there are no expectations to be the best leader, or the singer JB. He can just be himself, but lately, without spending time with her, it's as if he has no chill time. Even when he's not doing music shows, he's busy filming for Hard Carry. The most recent filming, doing the farming penalty had him exhausted to the point he slept through an entire day. When he's not filming Hard Carry, he's doing fan-signs, when he's not doing fan-signings, he's at music shows. When he's not there, he's in the studio trying to fix songs or create new ones because they're expected to be prepared and crank out music, because they're always working on another comeback. They have award season fast approaching too, which means traveling and that's always tiresome.

One bright side is that they're promoting Thursday, which is less intense in terms of dance compared to their title track, and he could use the break. He's just tired, and for some reason, no matter how much he sleeps, he still doesn't feel refreshed... and he's starting to think it's due to a lack of Seulgi. It's silly, really. They've gone longer without seeing or talking, but for some reason, it's now an issue.

If he had to pinpoint and diagnose his own feelings, he'd say it's the stage that he and Seulgi are in that has him like this. They're at a weird in-between state. Where it seems like their companies are against them, but they're more in love than ever. He'd be lying if he said on his more down days, that he didn't think about calling it off. It's not because he doesn't want to be with her, he's made that very clear, but what if he's holding her back?