Peninsula: Please, I only want to talk about ordinary people.

Chapter 2 "Reading the Air"

Jiang Yongtai turned around.

The person stood three steps away from him, arms crossed, chin slightly raised, with a familiar expression on his face—a smile on his lips, but no eyes.

"Saka..."

Jiang Yongtai's lips moved, but something in the air stung him before he could finish speaking, so he swallowed the rest of his words and changed his tone:

"Sana...long time no see, has the radio show ended?"

Sana tightened her arms around herself and looked away at the poster on the wall next to her.

A poster of Twice from a radio appearance a few years ago, in which she laughed without reservation, is still hanging there now.

"Long time ago?" She looked at him again. "Didn't we see each other at the coffee shop this afternoon?"

Her tone was deliberately cold, and the air around her trembled slightly, as if something was struggling to rise from the water.

He tried to understand the trembling, but he couldn't understand anything.

It wasn't that she wouldn't let him read; it was that his own radar was being interfered with by something in front of her. He had been trying to fix it for two years, but unfortunately, he couldn't.

Seeing his silence, Sana suddenly loosened her arms.

"Can you please stop using that trick... You just keep quiet and wait for others to slip up, even though I'm the Japanese one!"

She took a step forward. The corridor was wide, but this step shortened the distance between the two to less than that between strangers.

"When you were walking out of the elevator with the intern, didn't you know I was behind you?"

Jiang Yongtai didn't speak; she was indeed no longer within his perception range.

Seeing his silence, Sana suddenly chuckled, but the smile quickly faded before it reached her eyes.

"You were like this when we broke up."

She lowered her head. "You know how tired I am, you know what I'm afraid of... You've seen everything, but you say nothing."

I thought you were waiting for me to speak up, but then I realized that's just how you live. That's not fair.

She looked up at him, her eyes dry, but Jiang Yongtai felt a sharp, stinging pain in the air.

"sorry."

Sana was taken aback, not expecting him to apologize so suddenly. She turned her head away and paused.

"It was my fault for speaking just now. Goodbye, PD Kang."

"Wait a moment!"

Jiang Yongtai realized that his voice was too loud in the corridor, so he quickly looked around and thankfully no one was there.

Sana stopped walking and didn't turn around.

"Is there anything else?"

Jiang Yongtai sighed, did not answer, walked straight past her, and opened the fire escape door next to him.

He leaned against the door and looked at her from the side.

Sana glanced at him, bit her lower lip, and then changed direction and went inside.

There were only emergency lights in the fire escape. She stood on the small platform at the corner of the stairs, arms crossed, chin raised again.

"Speak, what is it? If it's an apology, then don't say anything more."

Jiang Yongtai opened his mouth, but the emergency light was too dim for him to see her expression. However, he could feel the air around her warming up again.

"Two years has passed. Don't you think it's a little too late?"

Her voice bounced off the wall and struck his chest, leaving him speechless.

"This is not an apology."

Sana blinked and then suddenly smiled sweetly.

"So you think you didn't do anything wrong back then?"

She took a step closer and looked up into Jiang Yongtai's eyes.

"The face didn't even appear before the cliff, that's really well done, Kang PD~"

Jiang Yongtai doesn't need to know how popular she is right now.

He raised his hand, took half a step back, and increased the distance between them.

"We're not going to talk about the breakup now, and I don't think I did anything wrong back then."

"Oh."

Sana gave a cold laugh, neither confirming nor denying the answer.

"Then why did you call me here? You can't possibly want to..."

"No," Jiang Yongtai quickly interrupted her.

"Saka, can you please stop thinking so wildly?"

Upon hearing this nickname again, Sana turned her face away.

"Quickly, tell me, Yuna is still waiting for me in the parking lot."

"I want to leave KBS, what do you think?"

Sana was taken aback, turned to look at him, and frowned.

Leaving KBS? He spent so long to become a PD, and now he's leaving?

However, she still kept a cold expression.

"What does it matter to me whether you leave or not? Have your ability to read the room stopped working? Can't find anything standout in your variety show? Or were you kicked out by the boss?"

"The ability... is very useful, but I was indeed kicked out."

Sana raised an eyebrow.

"It seems KBS really doesn't know what's good for them, actually kicking you out of the game."

But why are you telling me this? You don't want me to comfort you, do you? We're not in that kind of relationship right now.

Jiang Yongtai opened his mouth, but swallowed the words he was about to say.

"Because you're the only one I can't read right now, is that a valid reason?"

Sana was taken aback.

He can't understand her anymore? He's never told her this before!

"When did you start...?"

Before she could finish speaking, her phone rang. She glanced down at the screen and answered it.

"Yuna, me? I went to the restroom, I'm back now."

After hanging up the phone, she looked up at him, as if searching for something on his face, before looking away.

"Never mind, I'm leaving. Yuna is waiting for me."

She opened the door, stood at the boundary, and turned around.

"Jiang Yongtai, don't forget what you told me back then. I've already done it."

Her voice was flat, "And you...?"

The fire escape door closed in front of me.

Jiang Yongtai leaned against the wall, the emergency light emitting a faint electrical hum. He first noticed her under similar lighting.

Backstage at Music Bank, he was squatting on the ground winding thread, while she squatted two steps away, repeatedly practicing a single Korean phrase in front of her phone camera. She recorded it more than a dozen times, feeling that she wasn't saying it correctly each time.

He didn't want to speak, but she had been squatting there for so long that he had finished winding the thread in his hand, so he stood up and corrected her pronunciation.

She looked up at him, and when she saw the name tag, her eyes narrowed: "Kang... Young-tae PD-nim, thank you, but why did you watch me for so long before teaching me~?"

He did not answer.

Later, on the night that "Dance The Night Away" won its third consecutive week at number one...

After Yin Yin finished get off work, he was assigned to tidy up the backstage equipment. He was still squatting on the ground winding cables when a hand covered his eyes from behind, the palm of the hand was sweaty.

Guess who I am~

He pried the hand off, turned around, and saw Sana standing in front of him, her stage makeup still on, the glitter on her eyelids shimmering in the dim backstage lights.

Her stage costume was soaked with sweat, and her bangs were plastered to her forehead.

"Are you crazy? What if someone sees you...?"

"There are people everywhere outside, there's nowhere to go." She pulled him into the fire escape.

As soon as the door closed, she jumped up and landed directly on him.

"Three! PD-nim! Three now!"

She held up three fingers and waved them in front of him.

Not satisfied with just shaking him, she grabbed his wrist and pried three fingers off his hand as well.

"You know what? Today, some fans in the audience held up signs that said 'Summer Queen'! They actually wrote 'Summer Queen'! Ahhh!"

She covered her face, but laughter escaped through her fingers.

"This is just the beginning."

He reached out and removed a small piece of glittery confetti stuck to her bangs. "There's more to come."

"Of course!"

Sana took a step back, leaned against the stair railing, and opened her arms.

"Once I've won ten weekly number one hits, then... I'll go on tour, to the Tokyo Dome, not just to watch, but to stand on it!"

She drew a circle in the air with her hand, as if she were marking out a piece of land for herself.

"What about you? First, you pass the exam to become a full-fledged PD, then you make a show that nobody has ever seen before, leaving all those old men dumbfounded!"

"They have quite a lot of ambition."

"I haven't finished speaking yet," Sana interrupted him, raising her index finger.

"When you win the acting award and I win the music award, we'll meet backstage..."

She cleared her throat and adopted an exaggeratedly serious tone: "Oh my, isn't this Sana xi? Long time no see."

Then she immediately switched back to her own voice, putting on a high-pitched tone: "PD Kang! Oh my god, it's been so long! Are you here to receive an award too?"

She played both roles by herself and then laughed.

After finally finishing her laugh, she tilted her head and looked at Jiang Yongtai, her breathing still not completely calm.

"What do you think?"

"I think your acting is terrible, you'll definitely be exposed."

"ah!"

She tapped him lightly, then withdrew her hand. After a moment of silence, the hum of the emergency light returned.

"I'm serious." She looked intently into his eyes.

"You have to do it, and I have to do it too. Let's eat up half the market!"

Jiang Yongtai looked at her; her makeup was smudged, her hair was messy, and her eyes were filled with that future that had not yet arrived.

He nodded.

"it is good."

Sana smiled contentedly and extended her little finger.

"The agreement."

He hooked his finger around hers.

……

The overhead light flickered, pulling Jiang Yongtai back from his reverie.

He looked down at his hands, his right little finger unconsciously bent, as if hooking a hook that no longer existed.

She's done it; Tokyo Dome, Popularity Award—she's got them all checked off.

He was called into the deputy minister's office, smelled the cigarette smoke, and heard the words, "We'll do it in the second half of the year."

Jiang Yongtai put his hand in his pocket, reached for the pack of cigarettes, took one out and put it in his mouth. He tried to light it several times with a lighter.

As the nicotine sank down his throat, he suddenly chuckled softly.

I'm not laughing at her, I'm laughing at myself.

He could understand everyone, but he couldn't understand her.

Two years ago, I couldn't understand why she could dream so intensely in that kind of place. Two years later, I can't understand whether she was standing three steps away from him and wanted him to come closer or get lost.

He stubbed out the cigarette, straightened his collar, pushed open the iron door, and the corridor lights shone on him again.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at it. It was a message from Kim Sung-woo.

"Hyung, I asked PD Na, they have a meeting next Wednesday, it's informal, are you going?"

Jiang Yongtai stood in the corridor for a moment. The radio posters on the wall had been replaced one after another, but Minatozaki Sana's face was still on them.

Send me the address.