Chapter 2
Chapter two
Ipulled the hoodie over my head in the dressing room until my face disappeared into shadows.
Better.
My makeup was half-gone, with foundation breaking down around my temples and concealer creasing into lines I wasn’t supposed to have yet. Twenty-eight wasn’t old, but fatigue had settled in places sleep never quite reached.
I sat on the black leather couch and pressed my palms against my thighs. Felt muscle fatigue from holding positions too long and executing angles that looked effortless but required absolute control.
The door was closed. Fifteen minutes alone before the machinery started again. Fifteen minutes to stop being Rune and relax as Yoon-jae.
The difference between performing and existing was simple: performing required witnesses. Existing only required breath.
I existed for fourteen more minutes.
My phone sat on the table, face down. I knew what would be waiting: messages from the group chat, schedule updates, and a reminder about tomorrow’s 6:00 AM interview. Morning light made us look younger and more accessible. Accessibility was a byproduct we sold alongside the music.
I didn’t reach for the phone yet. Instead, I thought about Griffin redirecting me.
His hand on my spine had come from nowhere. Without warning, someone applied pressure with absolute certainty. Firm enough that my body responded before my mind processed what was happening.
My body had trusted him implicitly. That was the part I kept returning to. The immediate trust.
The industry handled me since I was seventeen. Choreographers positioned my arms. Stylists turned my face toward lights. Managers guided me through crowds. The touching was constant and completely impersonal.
This was different.
It said danger here, safety there, and then released me the moment I’d corrected course.
Griffin. Solid and watchful.
A guardian's name. The kind given to creatures meant to keep watch over things needing protection.
We first saw his name in an email from management. Chief Kang had said his name out loud once during introductions I’d only half-heard.
American name. American face. Something in the way he moved reminded me of the security detail my father had hired once, years ago, when threats against our family escalated. That guard had been former military. He moved through spaces as if he were always calculating distances and timing.
Griffin carried himself the same way.
Most people looked at Rune and saw what they’d decided to see before meeting me. It was a carefully constructed image with international appeal.
Griffin looked at me in the way he read rooms for exits. Assessing without assuming.
My phone buzzed. Once. Twice. Three times. I gave myself another minute before I picked it up.
Taemin: that new security guy has good reflexes
Taemin: Very hands-on security
Taemin: Also he’s handsome in that sleepy American way
I typed a response in Korean, deleted it, and then switched to English. The group chat was English by default on American tour legs, making it easier for staff who monitored international communications.
Rune: He was doing his job.
Taemin: So serious
Taemin wasn’t wrong. Griffin was handsome, though not in any way that photographed cleanly. His face had too much weather in it: lines at the corners of his eyes and tightness around his mouth. He was six-one, maybe six-two, broad-shouldered without bulk, and built for endurance rather than show.
His hands had been steady when they touched my spine. Capable with scarred knuckles. The kind that knew how to do necessary things.
I’d absorbed all of that in four seconds of contact.
The next notification caught my attention. It was an Instagram tag. From one of the venue's staff photographers.
The photo was blurry. Shot from the wings during the last run-through. I was mid-turn, and Griffin’s hand was clearly visible on my back. His face was partially obscured, but his posture was unmistakable. Protective. Precise.
The caption read: The team keeping our boys safe
Innocuous. Professional. Entirely appropriate.
I stared at it. The photo didn’t look intimate. To anyone scrolling past, it was precisely what the caption said: security doing security work. I zoomed in and studied the angle.
The photographer had stood near the equipment cases—twenty feet away, maybe twenty-five, and the framing was deliberate. They centered on Griffin’s hand on my spine. Our bodies were in profile. The shot caught the exact moment of contact.
Someone had been watching that specific interaction and thought it was worth photographing. My instincts, the same that told me when a lyric wasn’t working or a performance was off, said this mattered.
Or perhaps I was reading meaning into coincidence because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I deleted the tag. Pressed the three dots, selected Remove Tag, and watched it disappear. I’d been disappearing evidence of wanting things since I was nineteen. I was very good at it.
What would those hands feel like without fabric between us?
Heat pooled low in my stomach. Unwanted. Inconvenient. Undeniable.
I’d spent years learning to separate my body from desire. To perform sexuality onstage without experiencing it. To inhabit the space between availability and untouchability, where fans thought they had access, while ensuring they never actually did.
This was different. This was my body responding to proper handling.
I locked my phone. Set it face down.
Eleven minutes left.
I stood and paced, animated by the restless energy that always came after rehearsals, adrenaline with nowhere to go.
I thought about Griffin in that security room. Sitting alone with terrible coffee. My questions accumulated in the back of my mind. I didn’t have answers, but I knew where to find them.
I opened the door. Soyeon looked up from her tablet. “Do you need something?” she asked in Korean.
I answered in the same language. “I need to speak with the new security guard. The one from rehearsal.”
“Chief Kang can—”
“I don’t want Chief Kang.” I switched to English for the name. “Griffin.”
She hesitated. “Is there a problem?”
“No. I just need to speak with him.”
She knew when to stop negotiating. “Security room. Down the corridor, third door on the left past the monitor station.”
I loosened my hoodie’s strings and let my face emerge. Ran my fingers through my hair once, ordering instead of styling. Then I walked.
The security room was exactly where Soyeon had said it would be. The door was half-open. Through the gap, I saw Griffin at a folding table, reading something on his phone.
He looked up immediately when I knocked on the doorframe. His movements were fluid as he stood. He was taller than I’d registered during the redirect. Broader.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I entered and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t planned what to say. I’d only planned to come.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said. “For earlier. The redirect.”
“You already did. Onstage.”
“I know, but I wanted to do it properly. When people weren’t watching.”
“Anyone would’ve—”
“No,” I kept my voice level. “Most people would’ve called out. Or grabbed. Or let me walk into her and then apologize after.” I took one step closer. “You redirected me as if you knew I would follow your suggestion. That’s different.”
His hands remained relaxed at his sides, but his fingers flexed once. Involuntary.
“You are capable,” he said.
“I know, but most people don’t assume that.”
His shoulders filled out his plain black shirt. I wondered what he looked like beneath the fabric. Did his chest and stomach radiate the same controlled strength? Was his skin warm everywhere, or only his hands?
I asked my first question. “Are you here because of the threats?”
“Chief Kang asked for me specifically. I’m here because someone thought I could do this job well.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m trying.”
He was honest.
“You moved fast,” I said. “Like you’d already mapped where everyone was.”
“I had.”
“Do you always do that? Map rooms?”
“Yes. Knowing where people are means knowing where they’re going to be. If I know where they’re going to be, I can see problems before they happen.”
I thought about that, living in constant anticipatory awareness. Never entering a room without calculating threat vectors and exit routes. It sounded exhausting but familiar, too.
“I do that with lyrics,” I said. “Map them. Figure out where the words need to go before I know what they’re saying.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes. Other times, I map everything perfectly and then realize I was trying to say something they won’t allow me to say.” I tapped fingers against my side. “So I have to rebuild the whole thing until it sounds true enough to matter but vague enough to be safe.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It is sometimes.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Someone posted a photo. From rehearsal. You and me. The redirect.”
“I saw it,” he said carefully.
“The angle was strange. Like someone was watching at that specific moment on purpose. Waiting for it.” I pulled up the screenshot and turned the phone toward him. “This isn’t impromptu documentation. This is deliberate.”
He took the phone. Studied the image. His thumb moved across the screen, zooming in.
“Equipment cases,” he breathed. “Northwest position.”
“Does that matter?”
“Maybe.” He handed the phone back. Our fingers brushed. Electric. “That’s not a staff position. That’s a gap in coverage.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning someone could have been standing where they shouldn’t have been.” His eyes met mine. "And if they were, you were their focus."
The air between us thickened.
“Has anything felt off?” he asked. “Before today.”
“The text threats, but management tells us they’re standard.”
“Are they?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never received specific ones directed at me before the last few weeks.” I tilted my head. “Are you asking as security or as something else?”
“As security.”
“Then why do you look worried?”