Chapter 2: Between the Beats
The silence in the booth was absolute, a vacuum sealed by soundproof foam. The only light came from the steady, blood-red glow of the "ON AIR" sign, though the microphones were dead. Joong’s words seemed to hang in the air, molecules of confession bouncing off the absorptive walls.
“He said I’d rather be with anyone else,” Joong whispered, his voice sandpapered raw from singing and now from emotion. He stared at the pop filter, unable to look at Pond. “He said he celebrated our anniversary with flat champagne. Like I’d… like I’d left it out to spoil on purpose.”
He’d told Pond everything. The fight. The ugly, precise accusations. Leaving out only the crushing weight of his own guilt, which felt like a physical stone on his sternum.
Pond had listened, uncharacteristically quiet, spinning a headphone cup on the table. Now, he stopped it with a flat palm. The click echoed.
“He’s hurting, man,” Pond said, his tone stripped of its usual playful melody. It was flat. Direct.
“I know he’s hurting!” Joong snapped, the frustration boiling over again. “That’s what kills me. I see it. But I can’t just… stop. This train is moving. If I jump off, I get left behind. We all do.”
“There’s a difference between being on a train and being a ghost in your own home,” Pond said quietly. He finally looked at Joong. His eyes, usually bright with mischief, were dark and unsettlingly perceptive. “You’ve been a ghost for weeks. You think he doesn’t feel that?”
Joong rubbed his face, his palms scraping over stubble. The condensation on the interior glass of the booth had begun to recede, leaving smeared, phantom shapes behind. “I’m trying to fix it. I promised him tonight. And then you called, and the producer—”
“Yeah. I called.” Pond leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking. He studied the ceiling tiles. A long, measured silence stretched, so thick Joong could feel his own heartbeat in his ears.
Pond spoke to the ceiling, his voice low. “Do you think he knows about that night?”
The question didn’t land like a question. It landed like a shovel striking buried bone.
The air vanished from the booth. The sterile, recycled chill suddenly felt arctic. Joong’s head whipped around. “What?”
Pond lowered his gaze, meeting Joong’s wide, horrified eyes. His expression was unreadable—a careful blend of concern and something else, something poised. “That night. After the showcase party. Do you think he knows?”
“Why would he…” Joong’s voice died. His mind, already frayed, spun backwards. Three weeks ago. The pre-debut showcase success. The adrenaline crash. The bottle of expensive Japanese whiskey someone’s manager had given them, cracked open in this very booth to celebrate after the crew left. Just the two of them, swimming in relief and exhaustion.
The laughter that had tipped over a edge into something else.
The way Pond had said, “We never celebrate just us anymore.”
The first touch that wasn’t brotherly. A hand on a knee. A silence that wasn’t silence at all, but a scream of possibility.
The taste of whiskey, sour and sweet, and the terrifying, exhilarating collapse of a boundary they’d danced around for years. The heat. The frantic, clumsy, breathless collision against the mixing console, headphones clattering to the floor. The red “ON AIR” light witnessing it all.
They had never spoken of it. Not a word. A mutual, desperate pact of oblivion.
“No,” Joong breathed, the word a vapor. “No. He can’t.”
“People feel things,” Pond said, his voice still that infuriating, careful calm. “Atmospheres change. You’ve been weird with me since. I’ve been weird with you. Dunk’s sensitive. He picks up on frequencies most people don’t even hear.”
“We were drunk,” Joong said, the defense automatic, feeble. “It was a mistake. It meant nothing.”
Pond’s jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. “Did it?”
“Yes.” The vehemence was a shackle. “It was a one-time, fucked-up thing that never should have happened. It doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything,” Pond countered, leaning forward now. The red light cut across his face, half in shadow. “Because now it’s a secret. And secrets between us… they leak, Joong. They create a pressure. He’s feeling the pressure, and he doesn’t know why. So he’s blaming your job, your absence, because that’s the only reason he can see.”
The logic was water-tight and horrifying. Joong felt dizzy. He saw Dunk’s face again, the betrayed fury. You’d rather be with anyone else. Had it been a guess? Or had it been a specific, terrible intuition?
“Oh, god,” Joong moaned, dropping his head into his hands. The guilt metastasized, spreading from neglect into outright treachery. “What do I do?”
Pond was silent for a long moment. The hum of the studio’s central air conditioning was a low drone. “You have two choices,” he said finally, each word deliberate. “You either tell him. Full transparency. Or you bury it so deep you forget it yourself, and you pour everything you have into making him feel so loved, so secure, that the question never occurs to him.”
“I can’t tell him,” Joong said immediately, the thought causing physical nausea. “It would destroy him. It would destroy us. It was nothing, Pond. A drunken blur.”
He needed it to be a blur. He needed the details—the specific feeling of Pond’s mouth, the exact sound he’d made—to stay lost in the whiskey haze. Remembering would make it real.
Pond nodded slowly, as if he’d expected that answer. “Then you fight for him. You actually fight. Not just promises. You show up. You turn your phone off. You make him the priority, not the thing you fit in between schedule blocks.” He paused. “And you need to figure out your own shit. What you want. Because being confused is a luxury you don’t have anymore. He can smell it on you.”
The bluntness was a shock. A necessary, cold slap. Joong looked at his best friend, the person he’d trusted most in the world for a decade, and saw a stranger. A conspirator. A living, breathing manifestation of his own weakness.
“Why are you being so calm about this?” Joong asked, suspicion dawning. “This is… this is a disaster.”
Pond held his gaze. For a fleeting second, the mask slipped. Joong saw it—not guilt, but a raw, unresolved want, quickly shuttered. “Because I care about him too,” Pond said, and the words were true, but they felt incomplete. “And because this group is my life too. This,” he gestured between them, then at the booth, “can’t blow up JASPER. We have a contract. We have dreams. So we manage it.”
Manage it. Like a PR crisis. Like a scandal. That’s what it was.
Joong’s phone buzzed on the console, screen lighting up. A notification from Dunk. His heart lurched. He snatched it.
It was a photo. A close-up of two bowls of steaming Japanese barbecue rice, the kind from the terrible place Dunk loved. The message underneath: “Ordered. It’ll be here in 20. Come home when you can.”
No anger. No recrimination. Just a quiet, heartbreaking return to normalcy. An offering.
It was worse than the fight.
“I have to go,” Joong said, standing so fast his chair rolled back and hit the foam wall with a dull thud.
“The bridge—” Pond started.
“Figure it out with the producer. Tell him I had a family emergency.” Joong was already grabbing his jacket, his movements jerky.
“Joong.” Pond’s voice stopped him at the booth door. He didn’t turn around. “When you see him… really see him. Okay?”
Joong left without answering. He fled the studio, the hallway, the building, bursting out into the humid night gasping as if he’d been underwater. The city’s noise was a welcome cacophony. He needed the noise to drown out the echo of Pond’s question, which now looped incessantly in his skull.
Do you think he knows about that night?
The taxi ride was a blur of neon streaks. He kept seeing Dunk’s face from the fight, superimposed over the image of the takeout bowls. The hurt and the hope, twisted together. Which one was real? Which one had he earned?
He let himself into the apartment. The lights were low. The TV was on, some old game show playing silently. The rich, greasy scent of yakitori and sweet sauce filled the air. Dunk was on the sofa, wearing soft sweatpants and an old university shirt, his knees drawn up. He looked small.
He looked up as Joong entered. His eyes were cautious, a little red-rimmed. No smile.
“Hey,” Dunk said.
“Hey.” Joong dropped his keys, shrugged off his jacket. He stood there, awkward, in the middle of their living room. The marble floor felt like a chasm. “Smells good.”
“It’s here. I got extra chicken skin, the way you like it.”
A peace offering. A return to their script. Joong felt like a fraud walking onto the stage. Every word felt loaded.
He sat on the sofa, not at the other end, but close enough that their legs almost touched. Dunk didn’t pull away. He handed Joong a bowl, their fingers brushing. The contact sent a jolt of pure shame through Joong.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the clink of chopsticks and the muted laughter from the TV.
“I’m sorry,” Joong said, the words muffled by a mouthful of rice. “About earlier. I was… stressed. And wrong.”
Dunk nodded slowly, poking at a piece of broccoli. “I’m sorry too. I said things to hurt you. That wasn’t fair.”
“It was fair,” Joong insisted, putting his bowl down. He turned his body towards Dunk. “You were right. I have been a ghost. I’ve let this consume me, and I left you alone in it. I hate that I forgot our anniversary. I hate the flat champagne. I hate every second of it.”
Dunk’s lower lip trembled. He bit it, hard, to stop it. “I don’t want to fight, Joong.”
“I don’t either.” Joong reached out, tentatively, and took Dunk’s hand. It was limp in his for a second, then the fingers curled, gripping back. The connection was a lifeline. “I want to fix this. Starting now. Phone is off. I’m here. Just you.”
He meant it. With every fractured piece of himself, he meant it. He would pour all this frantic, misdirected energy into this man, into this room. He would erase the doubt. He would outrun the secret.
Dunk searched his face, his warm brown eyes looking for the ghost Pond had mentioned. Joong tried to project nothing but solid,