9. My Person #2
When we got back to Jin’s room, he said, “I should probably take a shower before rehearsal.” Then he looked at me, with mischief in his eyes. “Join me?”
Immediately I felt my body respond. “You might need help getting some parts of your body clean,” I said, and smiled.
Then it was a race to see who could strip fastest and get into the big hotel shower. Like many in the fancy hotels where we stayed, it only had a glass panel along most of one side, no door. I stepped in first. “Let me make sure the water is the right temperature for you, sir.”
He laughed but let me go past him, then traced a finger down my back to the crack of my buttocks. I shivered at his touch, and as soon as the water was warm enough I turned to face him.
“You are beautiful,” he said, looking at my body. “Do you know, in five years you’ve seen me naked many times, but I’ve never seen you?”
“There wasn’t a reason before,” I said.
He stepped up to me and kissed me lightly on the lips. I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer, so that our bodies touched. Steam rose around us as we swayed together under the rain-water shower head. Then I squeezed a handful of liquid soap from the dispenser and began massaging his chest.
I had touched him before, so many times, rubbing lotion into his skin, or my fingers skittering over his flesh as I adjust a shirt or pants. But never like this.
He mimicked my motions, and we soaped and rubbed against each other. Both our penises were hard, and he grabbed both of them in one hand. My whole body shook as they rubbed together. It was a kind of exquisite agony that I never wanted to end.
But all too quickly, I felt my orgasm rise, and I panted, “Oh, oh.”
“Come with me,” Jin said, short of breath himself. “Our first orgasm, together.”
It didn’t take much more than that. I spurted, and my senses were overwhelmed with a passion I’d never felt before, pleasing myself. Jin must have felt the same thing, because his body tensed and I felt him coming against me, then relaxing into my arms.
“I dreamed of this for a long time,” I said. “Sometimes you would be changing in front of me and I’d see your penis, or your butt, and I’d have to turn away because I didn’t want you to see my erection.”
He laughed. “Think of all the time we missed.”
“But we can make up for it now.”
We cleaned each other up, and then he washed my hair and I washed his, and we stepped out of the shower into big fluffy towels.
“I hope you still have some energy left for the rehearsal,” I said.
He laughed again, and it was the most wonderful sound. “I have even more,” he said. “We have to do this before every rehearsal and every show.”
I shook my head. “What have I unleashed in you?” Then I swatted his butt. “Now get dressed.”
We got downstairs just in time to board a bus for the Accor Arena, which hosted pop, rock, and international touring acts. I sat beside Jin and didn’t know what to say. How can you tell the man you have idolized for years how much it meant to finally share an experience like that?
Instead I told him about my sister’s latest obsession with shoes she would never wear. “I tell her that Louboutins are murder on the feet, but all she sees are the red heels.”
“How many times have you told me about your sister’s fashion issues?”
“They’re ongoing,” I said. “Whenever I go home I have to go through her wardrobe and remove items that aren’t right.”
“And she lets you do that?”
“Of course. No matter what she thinks, I’m the one in the family who has fashion sense.”
He smiled and we turned to watch the Seine go past. It was such a romantic moment, and even though we shared it, I couldn’t do as much as I wanted.
Though Pryzm traveled with our own core staff, the female groups often brought in a raft of hair and beauty personnel at each locale. We were lucky that all of us had short hair which the stylists managed, trimming and spraying before each performance.
At each venue we hired locals and used regular on-site personnel like directors, lighting technicians and camera operators. Technical rehearsal gave everyone a chance to work together. We arrived at the Accor Arena for a stage walk-through on Sunday afternoon.
From the wings, I saw Jin come out of the dressing corridor in black dance pants and a loose white rehearsal shirt threaded with silver, hair still damp from the shower, no stage makeup, no costume armor. Just Joon-hi in his working skin.
He caught my eye from across the stage and gave me the smallest smile, the private one, before something shifted. Shoulders back, chin lifted, the slight redistribution of weight that changed his entire presence. He wasn’t even trying yet, not really. But there was already electricity in the air.
That’s my person, I thought, and had to suppress the urge to smile like an idiot.
The director was a French-Bulgarian woman with a heavy accent in English, and sometimes Jin and the other singers had to rely on Grace to translate for them as they reviewed lighting cues, sound check, and camera blocking.
She worked closely with the musical director and the choreographer.
Ji-ho was always there, shooting rehearsal footage for the social.
I stood there with my kit bag at my feet, the sound levels testing at a frequency that made my ribcage vibrate. This was my favorite part. Before the screaming crowds, before the cameras, before Joon-hi had to become Jin. The raw mechanics of transformation, when an empty stage became a world.
“Let’s run through the opening,” the musical director called.
The opening synth chord hit like a physical thing: low, pulsing, building.
I’d heard this song a thousand times, watched them perform it in stadiums and music shows and tiny rehearsal rooms, but it never stopped affecting me.
The bass line climbed, the lights shifted from blue to violet, and the five of them snapped into formation with the kind of synchronization that only came from years of training.
Jin took center position. The lights caught the silver threading in his rehearsal shirt, and for a moment he looked like something mythical. Not quite human, not quite real.
Then he moved.
K-pop choreography wasn’t just dancing. It was storytelling through geometry, emotion compressed into angles and lines.
Every hand placement meant something, every turn had purpose.
The formations shifted like a kaleidoscope—five becoming one, one becoming five, negative space used as deliberately as the bodies that created it.
Tae hit his mark with mathematical precision despite the wrapped knee, his lines so clean they looked computer-generated. Woo’s youth gave him a kind of elastic energy, movements that seemed to defy joint limitations. Haneul and Min-kyu anchored the sides, steady and powerful.
But Jin in the center? Jin made it look effortless. Like he was breathing choreography instead of executing it.
I knew the truth. I’d seen him practice until his feet bled, watched him run the same eight-count a hundred times to get the angle of his wrist exactly right. I’d iced his knees and taped his ankles and held water bottles to his mouth when he was too exhausted to lift his arms.
The audience would never see that. They’d see magic.
Around me, the French crew had stopped working. A lighting tech stood frozen on her ladder, wrench dangling from one hand. Two stagehands by the loading door had paused mid-conversation. The stage manager’s weary expression had shifted to something like wonder.
I understood. Even in an empty arena, even in rehearsal clothes, even without the screaming crowds, Pryzm was undeniable.
The song built toward its climax. The formation split, re-formed, and Jin dropped into his signature move. It was a controlled fall that looked like surrender but was actually pure strength, catching himself inches from the stage floor before snapping back up in perfect time with the beat.