Bad Premonitions Never Lie
Bad premonitions never lie.
And so we walked the streets, talking about boyfriends and recent streams alike.
Today's plans hadn't been made with any particular purpose in mind. We weren't heading to G-STAR together like before, or meeting up for a collab stream. It was just one of those we should grab a meal sometime conversations that had finally landed on today.
If I had to put a name to it, call it a friendship hangout. Chat a little, eat a little, kill some time and rest. That was about the size of today's outing.
First stop was a restaurant. A place known for its pasta, with good wine and a famous chef behind it — put simply, a Western spot with a proper restaurant vibe.
This, too, was a destination under Nikang's direction. The whole meetup had been her idea to begin with. My job was just to trail along behind her and throw in the occasional nod of agreement.
"Isn't the atmosphere here nice? I came with some friends last time, and the pasta was really good—"
"Ohh, pasta…"
Just like that. A few well-timed nods of interest from my side, and Nikang lit up, chattering away with renewed energy.
One thing I'd noticed since starting to spend time with women — unlike before — was that most of them talked a lot. Sure, there were quiet ones out there, but nearly every woman in my orbit was on the chatty side.
People like that were what you'd call social butterflies, I supposed. The kind who were born loving company and couldn't stand a dead air gap in conversation.
Some of my viewers liked to call me a social butterfly too, but I could never be someone like Nikang.
My appearance had changed, and I'd picked up a decent amount of social polish, but the fundamental personality buried deep inside a person — that temperament — never really shifted.
Bottom line: when we met up like this, all I had to do was listen. No need to take the lead and open my mouth first. In a way, it was almost comfortable.
"—so this one's got a little kick to it… Kayak? Are you listening?"
"Ah, yeah. The squid-ink pasta is spicy?"
Of course, every upside came with a downside. The conversation moved so fast that even a brief moment of zoning out meant losing the thread entirely.
Nikang, who'd been debating what to order up ahead, shot me a pointed look.
"Not the squid-ink — the oil pasta is the spicy one. You weren't listening at all, were you."
I'd half-tuned her out, yes. Partly because there were so many options it was a pain to choose, and partly because they all looked basically the same to me.
I'd already handed her the decision — just order whatever you want, I'll eat anything — and yet she'd kept right on explaining.
"Hehe…"
But blurting out what I was actually thinking would've been amateur hour. At times like this, the best move was to just smile your way out of it. Not many people could keep scolding someone who was grinning at them, after all.
And so, one way or another, we ended up with pasta and a thin Gorgonzola pizza. While Nikang snapped photos to post on her personal SNS, I tore off a slice of pizza and tried it first.
Mm. Pretty good. The thin crust kept it from feeling too heavy, and the cheese flavor came through nicely.
Still, I wasn't sure it was good enough to make a whole production over. Looking around, the place was packed — teams arriving after us were waiting for tables. If you asked me whether it was worth standing around for tens of minutes just to eat this… well.
Even after we left the restaurant, I followed Nikang's lead. A café with pretty interiors and delicious macarons. This place was packed too. According to her, it was a hot spot just starting to blow up.
The interior was genuinely nice, and the macarons that came out looked… photogenic, I guess? Attractively pretty, at any rate.
Not bad, but my impression was much the same as before. Watching the crowd crammed in, I couldn't help thinking — did we really need to come all the way to a café this full just to not find a seat?
Honestly, coffee and macarons were available at any neighborhood café.
"It's because it's good for photos."
That was Nikang's answer to my comment.
Photos, huh. Earlier I'd seen people shivering in the cold just waiting in line — all that, just to take some pictures? That, too, was something my brain struggled to process.
Still, just trailing along behind Nikang was easy enough. Her routing was an art form — no matter how popular a place was or how long the wait, we walked right in the moment we arrived. She hadn't been bluffing when she told me to just trust her.
Western restaurant, then café, and the final stop on the itinerary was a bar. Tucked into an alley winding through the crowded downtown, and this place, too, had a certain… energy about it.
A pub called Suicide Pub. Literally translated… suicide bar? What kind of name was that. It wasn't like the Suicide Squad had opened a watering hole.
Come to think of it, what even was the difference between a pub and a bar?
The question hit me out of nowhere, so I asked Nikang beside me — she didn't know either.
I briefly considered asking a staff member, then decided against it. I didn't want to put some part-timer on the spot over something the owner would know better.
Like everywhere else we'd been, this place was crowded. That was a given — Nikang only went to well-reviewed spots that people actually used — but being right in the heart of the entertainment district, the stares felt especially concentrated here.
Looks I was used to by now. The kind that said if you held eye contact long enough, someone would walk right up and ask for your number. I turned my head slightly and stepped inside.
Following the staff's recommendation, we ordered beer and a few suggested dishes, and before long everything arrived at the table.
Nikang was busy again, tilting her phone just so to take pictures. The silver lining was that she didn't stop me from eating for the sake of a food shot.
If anything, when I reached for a side dish, she'd ask if it was okay to post a photo with my hand in it.
"Is that fun? Starsta? You've been taking and posting a ton since earlier."
It wasn't discomfort so much as simple curiosity. Then and now, I'd never bothered installing apps like that beyond the ones I needed for messaging.
Nikang paused at my question, thought for a moment, then answered slowly.
"It's not completely un-fun. When you post photos, people leave comments and stuff. But I use it more as a record than for fun, honestly. When I look back later, I can see what I did that day, who I was with, where we went, what we ate… it all comes right back."
"Hmm."
That reason I could understand. There were plenty of people who said the only thing that lasts is photos, and snapped pictures of everything they did.
And there were people who uploaded personal videos to Vtube just to preserve memories, so using SNS the way Nikang did didn't seem half bad.
"You don't do Starsta, Kayak? People would go completely crazy for it."
"Me?"
"It's a record, sure, but you can also use it to talk with fans. You can even do live broadcasts on it, sort of… When I post photos, my viewers leave comments too."
It lined up with what Yu Sia had said about trying vlogs. SNS was also a way to communicate with your audience.
Come to think of it, ever since I'd picked up pour-over coffee as a new hobby a while back, I'd been taking photos more often than I realized.
Every day I'd brew a cup, snap a picture, and upload the results to the gallery — which was basically my fan café at this point — like a daily routine.
Thinking about it now, if I was going to do that anyway, opening a Starsta channel or starting an actual fan café wouldn't be a bad idea.
I couldn't keep using the gallery for personal stuff that didn't fit the theme forever. Not right this second, but something worth considering at some point.
After that, I asked Nikang more about Starsta, we took a couple of photos together with our faces in them and posted those too, and under the influence of the alcohol we decided to drop the formal speech. Nikang was two years older than me, but she seemed to prefer the informal register herself.
"Got it, Seolha."
"Mm. From now on just talk casually like that — wait, I mean, yeah. Do that."
Given that my actual age was far higher, speaking casually to her wasn't hard at all.
The one thing that niggled at me was what would happen later if we ever did a three-way meetup with Ririyang.
If I went informal with Nikang — the oldest of the group — wouldn't that put Ririyang in a slightly awkward spot? The hierarchy would get scrambled into a total mess.
Eh, whatever. Two years wasn't that big a gap, and these days young people just became friends easily if they clicked, age difference be damned.
Maybe I was the one stuck in a box, dredging up dusty Confucian hang-ups.
And so, with a light buzz settling over both of us, Nikang and I were going back and forth — when a man whose face was flushed red, clearly drunk by anyone's measure, came walking over to talk to us.
I'd felt him staring hard from the moment Nikang and I first walked into the place. Sure enough — bad premonitions never lie.
"Ahem. Ahem. Excuse me."
I paused for a moment, considering how to handle the man who'd suddenly approached.