14. Breaking Point
brEAKING POINT
SANG-HOON — PARIS
The meeting broke up with the usual scrape of chairs and rustle of papers. Aidan and Liam stayed behind with Sun-hee-noona, discussing security staffing for London. The rest of us drifted toward the hallway.
“Hey, Sang-hoon.” Mina waved me over, grinning as she held up her phone. “You’ve become famous.”
I frowned. “What?”
“A fan edit.” She laughed. “They’re ridiculous.”
I leaned over automatically. The video opened with Jin walking offstage after the Cannes concert, his eyes scanning the wings until they landed on me. His expression softened into a smile I’d never realized anyone else had noticed.
The clip changed to my hands smoothing his jacket before the encore. Then another, with me straightening the microphone pack at the small of his back.
Then me in Cannes, running toward the stage before anyone else moved.
The caption read: Things only Jin’s stylist gets away with.
The comments blurred together.
Tell me they’re not dating. Watch who Jin looks for first after every show. The stylist is more protective than security.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he’s in love with him.
Mina chuckled. “Fans will ship anybody.”
Wan-suk, the makeup artist, leaned over her shoulder. “They’ve got way too much time on their hands.”
“They’re probably already making wedding videos next,” Mina said.
Everyone laughed. Everyone except me and Ji-ho, the socials guy. I looked at him. “Did you post any of these?”
He shook his head. “I never post anything backstage. And certainly not things like that.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the screen. Not because the fans were right. Because they had noticed.
Tiny moments I’d thought belonged only to us. A glance. A touch to straighten his collar. The way my attention found him in every room.
Thousands of strangers had assembled them into a story.
Sun-hee-noona stepped into the hallway beside us. She glanced at Mina’s phone, then at my face. “Everything okay?”
I forced a smile. “Fine.”
Mina dismissed the video with a swipe. “Don’t worry. By tomorrow they’ll be shipping Haneul with a flight attendant or the lighting director.”
Everyone laughed again and continued down the corridor. I stood for a moment longer, my stomach tightening.
If fans could see it...what would someone who’d been watching Jin for months see?
My footsteps were heavy as I walked to the elevator, then down the hall to Jin’s room.
I kept seeing the images on Mina’s phone, and the photograph of him in Cannes that Aidan had found in Jin’s dressing room.
The way he looked so vulnerable, his face circled in red marker like a target.
Someone had walked past every security checkpoint, every protocol, every precaution Aidan and Liam had put in place.
And left that image in his dressing room like a calling card.
You wanted our devotion. Now you'll learn what it costs
I let myself into Jin’s room with the extra key card he’d been given.
He slept curled on his side, one hand tucked under the pillow, his breathing soft and even.
The deep sleep that only came from total exhaustion, the weight of being watched and threatened finally dragging him under.
I sat in the armchair by the window, laptop open but ignored, watching the rise and fall of his chest in the dim light coming through the blinds.
I’d read the threat analysis Aidan had given us. Professional operation. Inside access. Multiple assets positioned across the tour. Three people who’d been in both Cannes and Paris, any of whom might have taken that photo.
One of them had been close enough to photograph Jin during a costume change.
Close enough to hurt him.
And I’d been there. Right there, doing my job, fixing his makeup, adjusting his costume. And I hadn’t seen the threat until it was already delivered, already escalating.
Jin woke and smiled at me. “Come here,” he said, and patted the side of the bed next to him. He sat up, and when I joined him we kissed.
“Do you think we can get away with sleeping together?” he asked. “Sun-hee-noona already knows and I think Eun-ji does too.”
I shook my head. “Eun-ji suspecting and Eun-ji knowing are two different things. And if she knows we’re violating the idol-staff agreement she’s in a very bad position with Starhouse.”
He reached for my arm, to pull me over him, but I resisted. I kept thinking about that awful package in his dressing room. “You need to get ready,” I said. “This time you take your own shower.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. But the more we give in to each other, the more dangerous it becomes. Mina showed me a video this morning. Something a fan put together, a collection of clips of you and me together, and speculation about a relationship. We have to try and stay professional, until the end of the tour. We’ve waited this long, we can wait a little while longer. ”
I stood up. “I’m going to get my kit. I’ll meet you downstairs for the bus. You have a concert to put on tonight.”
The bus drove us to the arena, where the afternoon disappeared into sound checks, costume changes, and the familiar choreography that happened long before the audience ever filled the arena.
Wan-suk powdered away the shine on Jin’s forehead while I adjusted the hidden microphone cable beneath his jacket.
“Better?” I asked.
He looked in the mirror. “You always ask that.”
“And you always ignore the question.”
His smile appeared in the mirror before he answered. “Perfect.”
Outside, twenty thousand fans were already chanting Pryzm’s name.
Security had changed since Cannes; every backstage credential was scanned twice. Every equipment case had been opened.
Aidan and Liam were rarely in the same place for more than a minute, circling the corridors in opposite directions like predators patrolling their territory. Sun-hee-noona’s headset crackled constantly with updates from venue security.
The concert began as the opening chords of the first song exploded across the arena, the five members of Pryzm danced their way onto the stage. The crowd sang every lyric.
Jin smiled, Woo flirted with the audience, Min-kyu ad-libbed enough French to earn deafening cheers, and Haneul’s solo left half the arena waving illuminated phones.
Even Tae, still favoring his leg slightly, danced well enough that only someone who knew him would notice.
I watched from the wings, exactly where I belonged.
Three costume changes. Seven water bottles. One emergency sewing repair after Woo caught a sleeve on a lift.
Normal, wonderfully normal. By the encore, I almost believed we’d imagined Cannes, and that those threatening text messages were just from fans of other groups happy to see Pryzm fall.
The bus left the Accor Arena just after eleven. Instead of taking the main exit, the lead vehicle turned unexpectedly through a service gate.
Sun-hee-noona looked up from her phone. “Change of route?” she asked Aidan.
“The Paris police suggested it,” he said. “Traffic.”
No one questioned him. Ten minutes later we were crossing the Seine when Liam stood and walked to the rear of the bus. I heard him speak into his phone. “Black scooter. Two riders. Hanging back.”
I twisted in my seat.
A dark scooter slipped between taxis before disappearing behind a bus.
Liam shrugged. “Parisian traffic,” he said, when he saw me watching him.
There was no urgency in his voice, no alarm. Just information.
By the time we reached the hotel, I’d almost forgotten about it. Until I was in the private elevator with Aidan, Jin, and Sun-hee-noona.
“We didn’t change the route because of traffic,” he announced. “Somebody posted our departure plan online about twenty minutes before the show ended.”
“Fans?” Sun-hee-noona asked.
“Maybe.”
“But the post included a description of the bus and the license plate.”
“I had the plate number in the paperwork from the bus company,” Sun-hee-noona said. “Only someone who had access to the Starhouse common drive could know that.”
Aidan nodded once. “Exactly.”
The doors opened, and he stepped out first. After looking both ways down the hall, he turned back to us.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam.”
Long after the hotel went quiet, I lay awake wondering whether the person helping our enemy was sleeping somewhere under the same roof.