Satovic Meets BYJ 2005 Chapter Two

I Want to be a Shellfish!



The ticket I had that day was for a flight from Taipei to Seoul on Asiana Airlines. Because I had some business to tend to in Korea after my trip to Taiwan, I had decided to go to Seoul directly from Taipei instead of going back to Narita (Tokyo). Because it was a one way flight, it was not a discount ticket, and a friend who was a good traveler had reserved a business class seat for me as the price is not that different. Later, when I learned from BOF’s announcement that my flight was the same one Yong Joon was getting on, I had leapt with joy, but I had also heard rumors that he had changed his flight to EVA Air which had the same departure time. So, I was not sure whether he would actually be on my flight or not.

The media waited outside the VIP lounge the whole time.
And the mob actually chased after him to the very moment he climbed into the plane.I really felt sorry for Yong Joon who was squashed in the middle of that mob. It was so dangerous that I walked after the group keeping a distance, and boarded the plane after all the media had left.

THEN!!!
Omo!!!! Omo, omo, omo!!!!

What….what in the world (((( ；ﾟДﾟ)))……

My god, my seat was in the same row as Yong Joon!

His seat was 1F, and mine was 1A,

Oh, oh, ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh my god, this can’t be happening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the spring of 2004, I had read a posting in the board of the Japanese official site (JOB) by a Japanese family who had the luck of being on the same flight as Yon-Yon when he was flying back to Korea.

At the time, I had thought, oh how happy I would be if I could have a good close look of him for just one hour….. and here I was in the exact situation that I had dreamt of!

Once he was seated, YJ took out a book from his Louis Vuitton bag, and took off his glasses to read it.

AIGOOOOOOOOOOOOO~~~~~!
How beautiful his profile was as he was reading the book! Σ(゜д゜;) ！！！！

How can I express it….with the light that was coming in from the window, the features of his face was accentuated. It was like, the face of Jun Sang, with the seriousness in the profile we saw when he was training during the “100 days project” floating in the sublime light … the beauty resembling the dark grey relief on a coin.

The beautiful line of the jaw, the brightness of his eyes, the radiance emitted from his strong will, and the sensual mouth. It all made my heart flutter!

I experienced something strange during my stay in Taiwan.
No matter how close I got to him, I was not fluttered at all. He was picture perfect like he was covered in some kind of plastic, but it was like watching an android, and I did not feel anything different from the Yong Joon I saw through my PC.

But!! The sight of him in the plane pierced my heart at once shot.
The word beautiful is not enough to express it. The Yong Joon I saw was more sensual, powerful, sharp, soft… every sort of contradicting charm were concentrated in his beauty..

I just stared at him in a daze. (゜ρ゜)ーーーーっ
I felt like Yujin stealing a glance at Chung Sang when he was reading a book, and if I watched him any longer, I felt that he might feed me Min Hyung’s line, staring right ahead of him: “So what do you see? It’s quite an ordinary face isn’t it? With one nose and two eyes… Do you always stare at people’s faces like that?
Oh, that couldn’t possibly happen, but I was scared.
I just couldn’t see him straight.



Sitting next to me, was a girl reporter from the Taiwan “Apple Daily”.
She couldn’t speak English. When she discovered that I couldn’t speak Chinese, she started to speak to me in broken Korean.
Yes….yes, I would love to talk to you but I’m BUSY you see… watching him!
But when I tried to face her, I was actually able to look towards Yong Joon while pretending to listen to her.
When she faced front, I tried to hide in her shadow, and took a verrry careful peek at him.

He had his long legs stretched out in front of him, and had the lower part below his knees crossed, and once in a while, he would re-cross them in a swift manner.
The gesture was like that of a little boy, and it was so cute that I loved it.
A little later, he was apparently getting hot, and he took off his white jacket, and was dressed only in his black shirt.
In such an elegant way, he took off his jacket!
And the muscle of his chest that I was able to see between the opening of his black shirt!!!
The thickness of his chest ........＠＠〕 I was getting dizzy………………

Because it was the very front seat, with an easy motion, he hanged his jacket on the in-flight magazine sticking out from the wall pocket.
When the plane shook, this jacket almost fell off, but just before it hit the ground, he was quick to grab it – just like he rescued Jin Young when she almost fell in to the pool in “Hotelier”.
I felt like whistling, “Hey! That’s COOL!!!”
I watched him performing scenes like this stealing glances by hiding myself next to the girl sitting next to me.

Never in my life did I envy the creatures in the shellfish variety more than I did then – if I were a crab or a shrimp, I could have stuck my eyes out to watch him as much as I liked!
Because I wouldn’t dare stick my whole body out to stare openly at him, I could only bend my head forward inconspicuously and jut only my eyes out (translator’s note: and satovic has HUGE eyes!), but I couldn’t help leaning forward more and more, until I was finally in the shape of the letter “C”.

When I put my arm on the armrest to support my body, and watched him dreamily, at that moment, Yong Joon who had his book in his left hand took the same gesture with his right hand.

(゜д゜;) Wha, What?
I jumped upright and quickly hid in the shadow of the reporter again.
Could he have seen me?

I was watching him from such a distance, and he was only looking forward… but was he still able to see me? Did he imitate me? Was he teasing me? My heart was pounding again.

BUT I WANTED TO SEE…. Again I hid in the shadow of the person next to me and watched him with my eyes only, dazed. Aah….. how happy I am. The beautiful line of his hands when he occasionally brought them to his mouth, the elegant way he turned the pages……

Incredulous of this bliss, I turned around to my friend who was sitting in back of me, and made a fool out of myself asking her, “hey, that IS Bae Yong Joon sitting over there right? Right?” Oh, how I wished time would stop there and then….



When the “fasten your seat belt” sign in the cabin went off, many passengers stood up to get Yong Joon’s autograph, so then, he quickly put on his sun glasses with dark brown lenses.
Perhaps, that is his ritual when he goes in to the work mode.

Unfortunately, with his sunglasses on, I could not read even half of his expression.
The gentle smile he shows when he is wearing his glasses is nice, too of course, but the penetrating beauty, the cool marble like beauty and the depth of his features when he is not wearing them are beyond words.
It occurred to me than, that if Lotte had wanted to bring out Yong Joon’s beauty when he is not smiling, perhaps they should have shot the Flavono gum commercials without glasses. I guess there are many many more possibilities waiting to be discovered in the actor Yong Joon.

When he is signing autographs, he has the face of a professional.
So, he can’t even relax when he is on the plane…
Any one who met their idol Yong Joon in a situation such as this would surely want a souvenir to remember it by. I suppose Yong Joon answers the request of each one of them so sincerely, because he understands the feelings of the people who come to him.

Among these people, there was a man who was obviously not his fan, probably a pro of some sort. Although we were asked not to take photos, he was snapping away when the manager was not looking.
Because I wanted him to relax at least during this flight, I did not ask for his autograph. I had actually prepared a book and a translation of it that I was hoping to give him if I had the luck of seeing him some where, but I was having second thoughts about handing it to him, too. I didn’t feel like bothering him.

The manager eventually started to ask the people to refrain from going to him, and so his job was finally over.
Just then, when I saw the title of the book he took up again, I realized that it was not something he was reading for pleasure. Well, if that was the case, I thought that maybe I could do something to make him relax a little, and decided to go over to him to give him my book. I did not want to receive anything for him, but I wanted to do something FOR him. I wanted to entertain him, make him happy, and make him laugh.

I walked over to his seat, said hello, and gave him a file which contained a print out of the website of the charity exhibit we held - it had pictures of works of art that the Japanese family made from their bottom of their hearts, such as drawings and embroidery of Joon.
I could not read his expression because of the large sunglasses, but when he took the file in his hands, he started to look through each page carefully.
I wanted to let him know how the Japanese fans loved him, enjoyed getting together, and was having fun.

Included in these photos were: the fans in Aomori were celebrating by wearing red towels, and shaking their fists in the air imitating “The Image” team when they had completed their project; the happy faces of the participants of the BSJ Valentine’s day event when they were practicing Korean etc…. Yong Joon was looking at the pictures, paying attention to each one. I knew that I shouldn’t take too much of his time, so I said to him, “Please, I would like to give this to you, so please look at it when you get home. And, one more thing - this is a book I wrote. The publisher had kindly consolidated the writings I posted on the Japanese official board. I had written them to entertain your fans, but I would be happy if you enjoyed them, too. I also made a Korean translation of it. It’s a very short story, so I think you can read it in about one hour, before this flight arrives in Seoul. Would you kindly read it, and let me know what you think of it? “. So, I gave him the book and the translation of Chapter One which was a suspense story.

Now, you may think that I said all this smoothly, but in reality, I was so excited that I was stammering pretty badly. Mr. Sohn (the president of IMX) was kindly interpreting what I was saying in Japanese, but I wasn’t sure what language I was using myself. I had started to speak in English from some point, but the grammar of the sentences was that of Japanese, and it got so messed up that I ended up putting the verb at the end of the sentence, oh dear, how am I going to end this sentence….that’s how it was.

Anyway, I somehow handed it to him and went back to my seat. Yong Joon started to read it right away. Actually, the translation was already completed a few months ago, and I knew I should have sent it to the person that it was modeled after. But you see, I could not send it. When I had the Korean fans read this story, there were two opposing reactions. Some of them said, “This is great! He would surely enjoy it!” while the others advised me not to show it to him.

I had written the story to fulfill Yong Joon-san’s dream of playing a bad guy who wears the mask of a good guy (translator’s note: YJ likes “The Usual Suspects”). So, not only did the first half of the story have parts that put him down, what really made the Korean fans worried was the fact that the heroine’s name was ‘Kim Mi Hyang (金美香)’. Mi Hyang happens to be Choi Ji Woo’s (the actress who played Yujin) real name. Any Korean who was a “Winter Sonata” fan knew that. And it was a well known fact that Yong Joon-san did not like to be talked about in connection with her. Of course I didn’t know that, and I was sorry for my ignorance, but I couldn’t do anything about it because it was already out in print. I thought it would be strange to change the name only in the translation, so I gave everything to him as it were.



I had another aim in writing this story. By honestly writing about such matters as how the society was critical of his behavior at the time of his visit to Japan I wanted to sublimate these things that were bothering us by expressing it in fiction. But according to the Korean fans, he disliked having unfavorable things said about his friends more than anything, so if he read the critical parts about IMX, he would be offended.

But it was fiction after all, and because it was a story I had posted on the official board controlled by IMX, it would have been deleted at the time if there were problems. I did not think much of that, but I WAS concerned about the point that YJ might be offended. If it were a signed book or something, he probably would not be able to throw it away, either.

But my worries turned out to be groundless. After reading about three pages of the translation, he burst into laughter.

Yeah !!! I did it! He thought it was funny~~~~~~~~~~~~!!!
I was so happy I could die!
I wasn’t sure which part amused him, but he could take a joke, he has that kind of sense of humor, just as I thought! After that too, he was so sincere and took time to read it line by line. Well, I guess he had no choice but to read it through if the author was scrutinizing him like that even if it was from afar (^_^;)


(to be continued)