Kelsey was in her childhood bedroom, the late afternoon Arizona sun painting stripes across her faded cheerleading comforter, when her phone buzzed. Han’s name flashed on the screen with a video call request. A warm, familiar ache spread through her chest. She accepted, propping the phone against a stack of old yearbooks.
His face filled the screen, hair damp and pushed back, the familiar backdrop of his dorm room behind him. He looked tired, but his eyes softened when he saw her. “Hey,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “You made it home.”
“Just got in a few hours ago,” she said, tucking a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. “It’s chaos down there. Mom’s cooking enough for an army.”
“Sounds good.” He shifted, leaning closer to his camera. “I wanted to hear it. The chaos.”
As if on cue, a high-pitched shriek of laughter echoed from downstairs, followed by the thunder of small feet on hardwood. Han’s smile was immediate, genuine. It was the smile she’d fallen in love with, the one that erased the idol and left just Jisung. “See?” she laughed. “Told you.”
They talked for a while, the easy back-and-forth settling around her like a favorite hoodie. He asked about her flight. She asked about his rehearsals. It was safe, familiar ground. Then the door to her room burst open without a knock.
Tenley, a whirlwind of eight-year-old energy in a glittery tutu over jeans, skidded to a halt. Her eyes went wide. “Is that Han?” she whisper-yelled.
Before Kelsey could answer, Tenley launched herself onto the bed, scrambling for the phone. “Tenley, wait—”
“Hi, Han!” Tenley shouted, her small hands gripping the phone, her face far too close to the camera. “I got a new hamster! His name is Sparkle!”
Han’s laugh was startled, joyful. “Hi, Tenley. Sparkle is a good name.”
“Do you want to see him?”
“Maybe later,” Kelsey interjected, trying to gently pry the phone back. “He’s on a call with me right now.”
“But Jace wants to say hi too!” Tenley declared, and with the formidable strength of a determined child, she wrenched the phone from Kelsey’s grasp and bolted from the room. “Jace! Jace, it’s Han!”
Kelsey sighed, a fond exasperation curling her lips as she got up and followed the trail of noise. She found them in the living room. Tenley had thrust the phone into the hands of their eleven-year-old brother, Jace, who was sitting stiffly on the couch, his ears turning pink.
“Hi,” Jace mumbled, holding the phone like it might explode.
“Hey, Jace,” Han said, his voice warm. “You’re taller.”
Jace’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I’m on the baseball team now. Pitcher.”
“No way. That’s cool. You’ll have to teach me when I visit.”
The simple promise, the ‘when’, made Kelsey’s breath catch. Jace’s face lit up. “Really? You remember how I showed you the curveball grip?”
“Of course I remember.”
Their mom, Jenny, walked in then, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She peered over Jace’s shoulder at the screen. “Well, look who it is. Han Jisung, in the flesh. Or in the phone.” Her smile was all warmth. “Are you eating enough over there? You look thin.”
Han’s posture shifted, a respectful straightening of his spine. “Hello, Mrs. Allen. I am eating. I promise.”
“You better be. I saw that video of you all dancing. Looks exhausting.” She took the phone from a now-distracted Jace, who was being pulled away by Tenley to see Sparkle’s new wheel. “How’s your family, honey? Your mom doing okay?”
Kelsey leaned against the doorframe, watching as Han answered her mother’s questions with a patient, gentle courtesy she knew he reserved for very few people. This was the boy who had eaten at their dinner table every tuesday for a year, who had helped her dad fix the patio awning, who had patiently let Tenley paint his nails a glittery blue. Her family had adopted him long before the world ever knew his name.
From the den, a voice yelled, “Is he still on?” Kohl, now fourteen and perpetually ensconced in a gaming headset, hadn’t moved from his battle station, but his attention was clearly divided. “Ask him if they’re playing Coachella next year!”
Jenny rolled her eyes, smiling, and held the phone out toward the den. “You ask him yourself.”
“I’m in a ranked match!” Kohl protested, but his eyes flickered to the screen. “Hey. Are you?”
Han laughed, the sound rich and unguarded. “I don’t think so, Kohl. But I’ll send you the new album early if you want.”
“Seriously? Yeah. Okay.” A grin broke through Kohl’s carefully cultivated cool. “Your last title track was fire, by the way.”
The chaos was a symphony Kelsey knew by heart—Tenley’s squealing, the distant *thwack* of Jace throwing a ball against the side of the house, her mom’s quiet commentary, Kohl’s rapid-fire keyboard clicks. And Han was woven into all of it, his voice a steady thread through the noise. He belonged here. In this messy, loving, ordinary house. The truth of it was a physical pressure behind her ribs.
Then, faintly from Han’s end, another voice called out, playful and teasing. “Han-ah! Who are you talking to for so long? Your American girlfriend?”
Han’s eyes darted away from the camera for a second, a flicker of something—annoyance, possession—crossing his face. “No,” he called back, his voice tight. Then, softer, into the phone, “It’s just my friend Kelsey.”
The correction, the ‘just’, should not have stung. They had said it a thousand times. But hearing him say it now, to his bandmates, while surrounded by the evidence of how deeply he was embedded in her life, felt like a lie. A cold, necessary lie.
Another distant voice, maybe Felix’s, bright and curious. “Can we say hi?”
Han’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He looked back at the screen, at Kelsey’s family, and his expression softened with regret. “I have to go,” he said, the words meant for her. “Practice.”
“Okay,” Kelsey said, moving to take the phone back from her mom. Her voice was softer than she intended. “Go be a superstar.”
“Bye, Mrs. Allen. Bye, guys.”
A chorus of goodbyes erupted from around the room. Han’s gaze held Kelsey’s for one last, silent second. Then the screen went dark.
The living room settled back into its normal rhythm. Tenley dragged Jace outside. Kohl’s headset went fully back on. Jenny picked up her dish towel again, but she didn’t leave. She stood watching Kelsey, who was still staring at her blackened phone screen.
“He’s a good boy,” Jenny said finally, her voice quiet amidst the residual noise.
“He is,” Kelsey agreed, the words thick.
Her mom stepped closer, reaching out to smooth a piece of Kelsey’s hair. Her touch was gentle, knowing. “I always thought you two would end up together.”
The statement landed in the center of the room, simple and devastating. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a hope. It was an observation, delivered with the quiet certainty of a mother who had seen the shape of her daughter’s heart long before her daughter dared to acknowledge it.
Kelsey looked up, her green eyes wide. All the denials, all the ‘just friends,’ all the careful distance built across an ocean, crumbled under that one, tender sentence. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The truth, named aloud by someone else, was suddenly too vast to hold.
Jenny just smiled, a little sadly, and squeezed her shoulder before walking back toward the kitchen, leaving Kelsey alone in the sun-drenched living room, surrounded by the echoes of his voice and the ghost of a future her mother had seen so clearly.