NeoNara || TXT || taebin || yeonkai

2016: Saturday, Part One

2016, DAY TWO
Saturday, August 14, 2016 12:20 AM

The policewoman from two years ago unlocks the sick room for Soobin and Taehyun while they wait for their transport downtown. Taehyun's head hits the small pillow on the cot, and he passes out in ten seconds flat. Soobin hasn't gotten a text message back from his father, but he doesn't want to leave Taehyun, so he's stuck staring at a wall and confronting his own feelings.

Why would his father message something like that to him? What good could he possibly do? All it's done has put Soobin on edge and make him worried about the future, as if he wasn't already! Soobin wishes that he could talk to someone about his feelings, but Taehyun's asleep, and while Taehyun does his best, he won't culturally understand as it is.

With as disappointed as Choi Donghoon sounds, Soobin wouldn't be surprised if he called the mob to have him dragged to JFK. It's feeling even more and more like Soobin won't have a choice in the matter.

There's a knock on the door. Soobin goes to it, to let whoever's there know that someone is sleeping. Perhaps someone is actually injured and needs the supplies in the room.

He opens the door, sees the face of the person outside, and immediately breaks into tears.

Yeonjun catches Soobin as he falls, pulling Yeonjun into his arms, nearly breaking his back as he does so. And Yeonjun is taken aback at first, but then he hugs Soobin back.

"You're killing me, man."

"I thought you weren't coming."

"I thought I wasn't coming, either. Where's Taehyun?"

"Asleep."

"Oh? Oh." Yeonjun pulls back from his hug and glances into the sick room, seeing Taehyun asleep on the cot. "Talk out here?" he asks in Korean.

"Yeah." Soobin shuts the door. He doesn't want to be far from Taehyun, but this is close enough. "Seriously, man." He sits on the linoleum floor, shaking his head, a grin on his face. Just when he thought everything was going to be awful, his best friend arrives to save the day yet again, even if it's just the fact that he's here, he's able to talk to. "What are you doing here?"

"Eomma talked me into coming up. So Appa drove me."

"Your appa drove you all the way from Jersey? That's true love right there, man."

"What a father won't do for his kid, I guess."

"Aren't you worried about...you know?"

"No, not right now. I'm more worried about this. I heard the news when we were coming up. The whole festival is on lockdown, they're not letting anybody out of their tents or areas until they've swept the grounds to make sure there isn't anybody else who's not supposed to be here. If I wasn't Daniel Choi of Shampoo Fairy, they wouldn't have let me in, but I asked for Jennie and she got me here to where you are." He's now the one to laugh and shake his head. "I should have known you would have been part of this mess. The drama at NeoNara always seems to follow you."

"It was more Polaris than anything," Soobin says, still talking in Korean but keeping his voice down. He fills Yeonjun in on what he knows: that Polaris has a restraining order on a woman, probably an ex, and she showed up. "They're saying she just...fell over in front of everybody, and the guards grabbed her."

"And Taehyun was yelling at her?"

"Yeah, and I know why."

"Why's that?"

"He probably didn't see her as whatever lady she is. He probably saw her as Mayumi. It's that same situation, where his idol is going under what he went through, being chased by someone who is controlling their life. Taehyun was defending Polaris from her Mayumi. That's why I got her out of there and back to the tent." Soobin can still see the look on Polaris' face, etched into the back of his eyelids, from when he had sat her down in the tent and security guards and staff members had surrounded her. But in that moment, Polaris had still wanted Soobin around, had still wanted the blue bunny to be nearby so she wouldn't be so alone. She hadn't let Soobin leave until Jennie had gotten there and Soobin had basically transferred Polaris to her.