Eunji

Yoonah and I walk out of the building together, feeling the crisp winter air on our faces. We hop into the car.

We’ve just had a meeting with our Tour Manager and the rest of our creative team, to finalize the discussion on the tour concept, the final setlist, stage design, and logistics, and are now heading to our dance studio for rehearsal.

Tomorrow we are starting the program and will be meeting and performing for the first responders.

Yoonah nudges my arm, snapping me out of my reverie. I’ve been staring out of the tinted window, lost in my thoughts.

“Sorry, what did you say?” I ask, turning to her.

She flicks her newly dyed pastel pink hair over her shoulder and gives me a curious look. “You’ve been acting all wistful and distracted all day, what’s up?”

I smile, and a flutter moves in my stomach. I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I should tell her.

“If I tell you something, you promise you won’t make a big deal of it?”

Even as I ask, I know it’s a futile request. Yoonah is the first person to make a big deal out of what I’m about to tell her. She turns every situation even remotely romantic into this epic Shakespearean saga, but if not Yoonah, who else am I going to tell about this?

She’s the perfect person who can understand what happened to me at the airport yesterday. The only one who can help me make sense of it, because right now I still feel like it was a dream.

She responds with an eager nod, her brown eyes sparkling with anticipation. “I promise,” she says. “What is it?”

I take a deep breath and tell her.

I tell her about the man with the forest-green eyes.

The stranger in the crowd.

 I tell her how my heart stopped and restarted as if I were reborn when our eyes met.

I tell her how the world stopped.

I tell her how even though I’ve never seen him before, I felt like I’d known him my whole life.

Her smile grows wider as I recount the story, then when I’m done she lets out a tiny scream. “Eunji, that was... the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!”

My cheeks burn as she squeezes me into a congratulatory hug. When she pulls away, she asks me in one breath, “So did you get his name, take his number? Why was he there? Was he a fan waiting for you or something?”

I shake my head. “No, no, and I don’t think so. He looked a little lost like he’d never been here before, which makes sense because we were at an airport. But there was something else about him... something in his eyes. I can’t explain it, but it was like he and I were the same but different.”

“Aw, soulmates!” She leans her head against the seat and clutches her chest. “I’m going to cry!”

I laugh. “Don’t, you’ll make me cry too!”

She gasps. “Then what happened?”

I shrug. “What else? I just got in the car with Dal and headed home. I was jetlagged anyway, so I just crashed as soon as I got home and didn’t even think about it until I woke up this morning. Until I started telling you about it just now, I could have sworn it was just a dream. I thought moments like these only happen in dramas.”

Yoonah swoons. “Just like me and my hot mysterious Rio man.”

I laugh. “You still don’t know his name?”

She shakes her head. “No, that was the thing the whole time. We promised each other we wouldn’t look up anything about one another and that we only had the few days and nothing else. It kind of allowed us to savor every moment we had together because of the time limit and the fact that we knew that after I left Rio, we would never see each other again. It was sort of epic.” She blushes and sighs, as her eyes look back into her time in Rio. “He was the perfect man.”

I shake my head and laugh. “You’re so extra.”

As the girls and I rehearse “Super Hero,” the song from our debut album that we’re performing tomorrow when we start the program, the memory of my encounter with my green eye stranger replay in my mind on repeat, making my toes curl, and making butterflies take over my chest.

He was so unassuming yet striking at the same time.

I could tell he was just as surprised by it as I was, and neither of us could stop it once it was happening.

I wish I knew his name.

Where he came from.

Anything about him.

I’m not like Yoonah, who is content after having spent a week with someone and moving on without wanting more or wanting to know everything about them. I want to know everything about him. I want to run back to that airport right now and look for him.

I want to know if his thoughts are about me too.

We stop to take a five-minute break and with heaving breaths and sweat dripping down my neck and forehead, I walk to the fridge to grab some water.

Wo-young and Hana run after me.

“So…” Hana teases with a lifted eyebrow, her auburn hair wet from sweat. 

“What?” I open the fridge and grab a bottle.

“Yoonah told us about mysterious airport man…” Wo-young says, curiosity dancing in her light brown eyes.

I stifle a knowing smile and throw Yoonah a look. She’s on the floor, catching her breath.

“I told Yoonah not to make a big deal out of it.”

Hana scoffs. “Big mistake, it’s Yoonah we’re talking about here. Big Deal is practically her middle name. So tell us about him…”

I shrug. “I don’t know, there’s really nothing to tell. It was just this intense moment that lasted for a few seconds and then it was over, and I’ll never see this man again.”

As I say this, my heart stings at the thought.