Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
what's the price of fame? 'cause i can taste it.
-
Noah does not want to be here at all.
Winter in Seoul is unforgiving, but you won't find a trace of the biting cold inside Club FEVER. Girls with dresses that barely cover their behind and guys with sweat-stained shirts fill the crowded dance floor, their body heat alone is able to make the club feel like a sauna. Noah sits idly by the bar with a shot of soju in hand, forehead glistened with sweat and not in the mood for dancing. He feels utterly alone and homesick.
Staring down at the shot glass in his hand, Noah chugs its content in one big gulp. The soju slides down his throat smoothly, doesn't leave a burning trail like the hard liquor he sneaked in back home during his rebellious teenage years. Noah misses home. He misses the merciless Arizona sun. He misses his old teammates back in Portland. He even misses the ridiculous traffic jam in LA.
But what he misses the most is her.
Again and again, during the restless nights and feverish days, Noah pictures her in his arms. Her wry smirk, her caca eyes, her blue hair -- oh he craves her presence.
He craves Dixie.
She was his lover -- a haunting dream that he cannot be free from. No matter how far he goes, Dixie's ghostly presence will always follow him. Seoul is 5953 miles away from Los Angeles, but not even the Pacific Ocean can drown his love for her. What is she doing now, Noah ponders. Is she tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of him? Or is she snoring soundly, in the safety of another man's arm? Noah is scared to picture the latter.
He wonders why she broke up with him. Was he not good enough? Is there another man? Dixie never answered any of his questions -- she didn't even provide him with a reason -- and Noah is left alone in the dust, the pain of heartbreak eating him alive.
Now here he sits at the bar, amidst a joyous crowd with foreign faces, Noah feels more lonely than ever. He is waiting, patiently, for something to happen --
Or maybe, he is waiting for a particular someone all along.
-
"Boss," the stern-faced bodyguard calls out to the man in the dim-lit room, "we got a fight on the floor."
Park Jinyoung emerges from the room. His tailored suit clads his figure nicely, along with his cologne that gives out a subtle and musky scent. His presence is overbearingly dominant, causing the muscular bodyguard to cower slightly under his intimidating gaze.
"What seems to be the deal?" Jinyoung asks his man while glancing down at the dance floor below his private balcony, furrows his brow in distaste when he spots the quarrel in the crowd.
"It appears to be caused by two drunk customers, sir," the bodyguard replies, "would you like me to escort them out?"
Jinyoung gives his man a curt nod and watches him rushing down to the floor with two other security guards. Jinyoung glances across the dance floor one last time, but before he can return to his office, a certain someone catches his eyes.
A young man, barely old enough to be here, is leaning against the bar with an empty shot glass in hand. He stands out from the rest of the crowd -- partly because he is the only non-Asian face here, but the part that intrigues Jinyoung the most is the suffocating sadness that surrounds this mysterious boy.
Jinyoung recognizes the look in the boy's eyes, a look he once held in his eyes during his complicated divorce with his ex-wife. The pain of going from lovers to strangers has a specific aura to it, and it is that aura that draws Jinyoung's attention to this foreign stranger.
Before he can register what is happening, Jinyoung finds himself standing in front of the young man whom he observed from afar, offering him a drink. Jinyoung smiles at the lost look in the boy's eye and his struggle to refuse the offer with his broken Korean. "I mean no harm," Jinyoung interrupts him, now speaking in English, "I'm the owner of this place, please take it as a token of apology for that fight earlier. That should've never happened in my place."
Noah stares up blankly at the man in front of him and accepts the glass of whisky. The older man smiles and takes the empty seat beside Noah at the bar. "My name is Park Jinyoung," he offers Noah his hand to shake.
"I'm Beck. Noah Beck."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
