Chapter 4: Chapter 3
Before Saturday could come, bringing with it the daunting scenario of having to give MJ an answer, Friday arrived first.
Friday, with my evening dance classes.
"You look even more focused today."
I looked up from my stretching to the sight of a woman in a crop top and leggings, her black hair done up in a ponytail as she smiled down at me. Like always, her pure smile made me feel healed, even when I knew that same smile would feel like torture the moment classes started.
Our dance teacher and a dancer I truly admire, Yoo Hyerin.
"Hyerin," I said, smiling back as I stood up to my full height. "That obvious?"
I could read the amusement in her smiling eyes, her smirking mouth. "Yes. But then, I've known you for a year now, so I have a better feel for your mood. Did something happen?"
"Well, something definitely happened," I said somberly. I turned my gaze away, looking to everyone else as they warmed up. I stretched my wrists in the meantime. "MJ wants to introduce me to someone."
"Aha." Hyerin exhaled on a laugh. "The extroverted friend who's the reason for you having all your other friends."
"You didn't have to put it like that..."
"Isn't it true?"
I smiled helplessly. "Alright, it is. I just never feel like looking, not unless, well."
"They like Roy."
A laugh escaped me at her blunt words. "They like Roy," I agreed.
"It's still a pity that you deleted your dance cover, you know," she said. The look on her face, with her lips in a moue and her brows furrowed, gave me the impression of a mother disappointed in her child for wasting an opportunity. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was interesting to receive it for such a flimsy reason. "Roy could've seen it and hired you on the spot."
I brought my knee up in a slight stretch, rolling my ankle all the while. "As a back-up dancer?"
"As his girlfriend."
I stumbled on my one leg until I ended up pulling out of the stretch completely. With an incredulous laugh, I said, "What is it with you people and imagining such weird things? I admire the man, but that doesn't mean I want to date him."
"You love him."
I sighed at the correction. It was my own fault that people acted like this towards me. I must have been repetitive in expressing my love for Roy to the point of exhaustion that they considered it a success whenever they could throw the same words back in my face. "Yes, I love him," I said, resigned. "But love doesn't necessarily have to be romantic all the time."
She raised a brow at me. "That's what you say now..."
I bit my tongue from saying something untoward. Alright, maybe my patience was wearing thin with these accusations. Had I been my younger, teenage self, I would've immediately said what was on my mind; as things were, I wanted to believe that I'd already outgrown that immaturity of mine.
"It's just...not like that," I huffed, pulling my other leg up for a good stretch. "Besides, you act like it's that easy to get with someone like him." While the chances were not completely nonexistent now that MJ was intent on introducing me to the man, Hyerin didn't exactly know that.
"I mean, why not?" She gave me a grin like she genuinely believed her own words. "You're a cool person. You've got charisma, even when you act like you don't. You even have model proportions, and didn't he say his type is—"
"Don't you have a class to teach?" I interrupted, smiling to let her know I'd meant it as a light joke. "Enough with hounding me on my nonexistent love life with Roy Hirsch."
I didn't have to hear her words to be reminded of Roy's type. I've loved the man for around five years—of course I'd remember such details.
Someone who could keep up with him. Someone who would support him in his ventures, and someone he could support as well. Someone who understood his love for acting, who wouldn't deny him his joy in it.
A person that destiny would lead to him, because he's a romantic like that. The person being cool and a little bit cute would also be nice.
It was one of the things that made me love him a little more, because he'd been so serious when he said it. Even the physical features he'd mentioned weren't so specific to the point of being discriminatory; he'd just mentioned them offhandedly, as if they were the last priority in a list of his ideal traits.
"I personally think there's a chance," Hyerin insisted still. With wide eyes and a pleased as punch smile, she added, "Hey, what if I try to connect with his agency so we can work together? What do you think? It could boost our gym's popularity too, so it wouldn't be a bad deal for me."
I laughed. These people were more enthusiastic about me meeting Roy than I am. Why was that? I really couldn't understand it. "I won't stop you if that's what you want, but I'd call in sick if he's ever here on Fridays."
She frowned at me. "Hey, you can't do that."
"Watch me."
She gave me a look. It made me feel like an unruly puppy being scolded, which was oddly specific, but it was exactly that—MJ looked the same way whenever she was telling off her rambunctious golden retrievers.
"I don't see just what it is you're afraid of," she told me, gentle eyes narrowed as if worried. "He's just a guy."
"It's not being afraid of meeting him as it is just me not feeling it. And it's true that he's just a guy," I said. That much was true, for all that I might accidentally put him on a pedestal at times. "That's why, there's no need to meet him, is there?"
"That wasn't my point."
"Then what is?"
"Why are you so cautious about meeting someone who makes you so happy?"
My smile faltered at her words. We'd only been joking, so why did she have to make the mood this serious? It really wasn't that big of a deal that I didn't want to personally meet someone I idolize. "I'm not cautious, really," I said. "It's nothing that big. I just don't feel like making a thing out of my appreciation for him."
"Other people would want even a glimpse of their favorite actor in person, you know."
"Other people want to marry their favorite actors, which I can respect, but that isn't me," I said lightly. I smiled at her, and she frowned in return. "Looks like the others are finished with warm-up. Let's start?"
A resounding silence followed in response. I avoided her gaze as she stared at me; it took her giving in to a sigh, and giving up on the topic completely, for me to look over at her again.
She clapped her hands, getting everyone's attention. "Alright, everyone gather around!" she said, voice booming through the room. Like orderly soldiers, everyone came to a stop in their warm-ups to follow Hyerin's voice until they were all neatly surrounding her, waiting on her instructions.
When she gave me a look from over the crowd, I could clearly read the unspoken words through her eyes.
'We're going to talk about this later, Sofia.'
I shrugged, then walked to my place further back from the crowd. Even if we do or don't talk, it wouldn't change anything. I'm a fan of Roy's, but that didn't require a desire to meet the man himself.
My thoughts and worries on it, my complicated feelings toward my friends' unnecessary good will, would all fade away the moment we start practicing, anyway. It'll be fine.
And it was, for an hour or so.
My thoughts, as they often were when I danced, were a vague fog that I didn't have to think too hard about. It was easy to laugh like this, easy to share a knowing grin with a fellow dancer because a move looked a little too funny in slow-motion. I only had to think about moving my body—my hands to the air or down my hips, my feet, sliding or skipping depending on the beat.
I was goaded into a couple flips at one point, some illusion turns, with everyone cheering me on as I did it once, then twice, thrice. Before I could even process it, I found myself already twirling one of the dancers into my arms, even sharing sly grins with her as we dropped down into a teasing grind. A kind of sensuality I would never engage in otherwise, had it not been this exact setting.
Maybe it helped a little, that this kind of dancing made everyone else laugh, or squeal, or whistle for an encore because it was amusing. It didn't have to mean anything.
None of it had to mean anything.
That realization made me breathe out a heavy exhale like I'd just run a marathon, and I finally reached the finish line. I gave a laugh and a hug to my dance partner who, with flushed cheeks, gave me a tight and lingering hug of her own.
My heartbeat was loud in my ears, the moment we parted from each other. 'Of course,' I thought to myself. None of it had to mean anything. Meeting Roy didn't have to mean anything either. None of this had to be that difficult.
I'd hesitated for so long, made MJ be the one to plead for me to meet him, disappointed Hyerin despite her efforts to be a good friend, all for what?
My petty pride? The fear that meeting him once would ruin the five years of love I'd kept safe for so long?
How cowardly.
MJ might have wanted me to meet Roy because she wanted me to gain more friends, and Hyerin might have some weird delusions of my potential romance with a celebrity, but none of those reasons had to decide the outcome of whatever may happen. It could just as well be a short "hi, hello," and that would be enough.
It didn't have to be so complicated. How could I have forgotten that?
I was smiling by the end of the class, both because of the resolve I'd just gained, and because of the heavy shot of dopamine in my blood from a good work-out. I felt empty yet full, with my brain in a pleasant buzz as I gulped down water to hydrate myself.
"Sofia."
I didn't let up on my smile even as Hyerin approached me. "Yes?"
Her expression looked like it was torn between feeling amused and trying to be serious. "I'll really call their agency," she said.
That sounded like a threat, the way she spoke it.
I shook my head, not minding the frown it earned me. "You don't have to. I'll do it."
"...what?"
"You want me to meet him?" I re-capped my bottle and returned it to my bag. "I'll meet him. One photo with him, and then I'm done. That much should be enough, right?"
She was staring wide-eyed at me when I finished speaking.
I couldn't help it. I burst into a laugh.
"Wh—are you serious?" she stuttered, eyeing me with apprehension. "Are you telling me you had a way to contact him this whole time?"
I gave her an amused look. "You're believing me a little too easily, don't you think?"
"You don't lie like this."
I blinked at her words. "Huh?"
She looked at me. Just looked at me, without really doing anything else, and yet, I couldn't help from feeling awkward in my skin. I wasn't even sure on how to describe her expression, other than it being soft. Soft, and...
"You're not the kind of person to make up a lie on the spot like that," she said firmly. As if she were certain, and no one in the world could prove her wrong.
A wry smile settled on my lips at her conviction. While I wanted to correct her, I didn't really feel up to arguing when I was still feeling good from dancing. "I'm not that honest," I said instead.
"You're sarcastic, not a liar."
I shrugged. "Maybe."
She raised a hand, then hesitated with her palm face-down in mid-air.
There it was: her habit of patting people on the head. She wasn't even tall enough to make it work with me, but it was a habit she'd kept from home up to here. As affectionate as the gesture may be, it could feel condescending at times, a bit like being treated as a dog, or a child, but...
It wasn't like I minded it now.
I bowed my head in front of her, and she gently patted my head.
"You're a good kid, okay? I really think that," she said, giving my head a pat or two before letting me go. "Then, you're really going to meet with him?"
I put a finger to my lips, and she grinned, miming a zipping motion with her fingers over her closed mouth in agreement.
"I'll send you proof, somehow," I assured her. "And you can blame MJ for the whole thing."
It took a moment or two before the light of realization dawned upon her, making her eyes widen with sheer shock. I couldn't even fault her for grabbing me by the arm, because I would've been surprised if I were in her place too.
"That was the person she wanted to introduce?" she hissed under her breath, leaning in closer to me so she wouldn't be heard by the others. "What kind of connections does your friend have?!"
I gave a shrug. "At this point, I've just stopped wondering."
Because otherwise? I was sure I'd go insane, given the number (and quality) of people that MJ knew from natural sociability alone. That wasn't even mentioning the number of friends she'd made from family connections, which were plenty enough as they were.
Extraverts truly were terrifying, and I would be meeting the most terrifying one tomorrow.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone