23. Drowning
DROWNING
JIN — LONDON
Aidan found me in the corridor outside the green room a half hour before the concert started, where I’d escaped for a few minutes. The hallway smelled of hairspray, overheated electronics, and the stale adrenaline that seemed to live permanently in venues like this.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
He gave me a look that made it clear he wasn’t buying that for a second.
“Jin, I’ve spent most of my adult life protecting people who are in danger. I know what fine looks like, and this isn’t it.”
I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes for a moment. “Sang-hoon left.”
“I know. Sunny told me.”
That should have embarrassed me, but I was too exhausted to care.
“For what it’s worth,” Aidan said, “I think he made the wrong call.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You do?”
“Absolutely. Protection details don’t usually fail because someone loves the principal too much.
They fail because communication breaks down, because people make assumptions, because someone important is somewhere they shouldn’t be.
” He folded his arms across his chest. “Sang-hoon leaving doesn’t make you safer.
It makes you distracted. And distracted people miss things. ”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Fear makes smart people do stupid things.”
I let out a breath that sounded dangerously close to a laugh.
“Your group needs you focused tonight,” he said. “Twenty thousand people. A massive venue. An active threat we still haven’t identified. So I need an honest answer.”
I already knew what he was going to ask.
“Can you do this?”
At rehearsal, my body had felt heavy, and every movement had seemed delayed by half a second, as though my mind was somewhere else and the rest of me was struggling to catch up.
“Yes.”
Aidan’s expression didn’t change. “Can you stay alert?” he asked quietly. “Can you pay attention if something feels wrong? Can you react?”
Every thought I had circled back to Sang-hoon. To the way he’d stood in the hotel room pretending this was the right decision for both of us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Aidan nodded. “Then do your best to stay present,” he said. “Because if someone is planning to make a move, vulnerability is exactly what they’re counting on.”
He squeezed my shoulder once and walked away, leaving me alone with the noise of the arena building around me.
We were all getting dressed in one large room. Mina, Wan-suk, and Du-ri were moving between us when the energy backstage shifted and we heard voices raised somewhere down the corridor, followed by the crackle of radios and two arena security guards rushing past the door.
Mina paused with a tube of concealer in her hands. “What’s happening?”
No one answered. One of Jason’s men hurried past the dressing area, speaking urgently into his radio in Korean. I caught only fragments.
“—north access corridor—”
“—she was supposed to be—”
“—lock that entrance down—”
My stomach tightened as Aidan appeared at the doorway. “Good, you’re all here,” he said. “Stay put.”
“What happened?” I asked.
But he was already gone, Liam right behind him.
A moment later, Jason was striding toward us with a fury I’d never seen on his face. “Security issue. No one leaves this area without clearance.”
“Security issue how?” Haneul demanded.
Jason ignored the question, speaking into his radio instead.
Then I saw her. Just for a second, at the far end of the corridor. Sophie, the photographer from Paris.
One of our two Starhouse security guards had her by the arm, but she twisted free long enough to say something I couldn’t hear before another guard stepped in.
Then the three of them disappeared around the corner.
“That’s one of the photographers,” I said. “She took a lot of photos of me in Paris. Why is she in trouble?”
His jaw tightened. “This is being handled.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he snapped, “it isn’t.”
The stage manager appeared at that exact moment, headset askew, panic and professionalism fighting for control.
“Places in ninety seconds.”
I stared at her. “There’s a security breach and you want us onstage?”
“Twenty thousand people are out there,” she said. “Unless someone tells me the show is canceled, you need to take your places.”
My pulse was racing now. I looked toward the corridor where Aidan had vanished. Toward whatever was happening that no one would explain.
Then Haneul gripped my shoulder.
“Joon-hi.”
I turned to him.
“Later,” he said quietly. “Right now, we perform.”
Years of training took over where conscious thought failed. My body knew the choreography even when my mind drifted. My voice hit the notes. My smile appeared when the cameras found me.
To the audience, I was probably exactly what they expected. To myself, I felt hollow. Fortunately, I had the vast mechanism of the show to guide me. The way props moved on and off stage, lighting that blossomed and faded, musical cues that told me where I had to be and what I had to sing.
During the third number, I glanced automatically toward the wings, looking for Sang-hoon before I could stop myself.
Of course he wasn’t there.
After the first set, the lights went down and we hurried off stage in the dark, guided only by ghost lights in the wings.
Behind me, I heard the video screens switch on, showing footage from other concerts and the kind of quick bits we taped between shows, Min-kyu and Woo laughing together, Tae doing a complicated dance step in front of Gyeongbokgung Palace.
Haneul and me singing an impromptu duet before a crowd at Lotte World Tower mall.
Mina handled the costume changes quickly, efficiently, the way a session musician subs in when the regular player is sick. Every note correct, no hesitation, nothing you could point to as wrong. The jacket was right. The timing was right. Everything was right. It still felt like a different key.
As the music video faded, we hurried back to take our places on the stage for the second set. I nearly bumped into Tae during a dance number, but he played it to the audience for a laugh, which made it seem planned.
By the time my solo stage came, I was functioning entirely on instinct.
The song was one that usually meant something to me.
Tonight I sang it like a cover version: the notes in the right places, the phrasing recognizable, but the original recording playing underneath it and making everything I did sound slightly wrong by comparison.
The audience screamed when I finished, but I felt nothing.
My makeup was a mess after the second set, sweat dripping down my cheeks. Wan-suk tutted as she wiped my face clean, then patted it dry with a towel while Mina adjusted my jacket. I felt like a doll being played with by the two girls.
Starhouse had trained us for a potential loss of energy between sets, and drilled it into our heads that we were like athletes, trained to perform. Min-kyu and I sometimes clapped our hands together like seals, laughing about the raw fish they would give us as a reward.
I was the idol I had been trained to be.
I sang, I danced, I interacted with the audience.
The five of us joined hands and bowed at the end of the final number, then quickly took our places for the encore.
We usually improvised the choreography based on the audience and whether we had that promenade stage.
We’d stride down it, clapping our hands to the beat, stopping periodically to slap hands with members of the audience.
Our usual song was Always Home, the one we’d ended almost every concert with since our second album. Twenty thousand people knew the chorus. I had sung it so many times that the words usually came without thought.
“Wherever I go, you’re with me / I’ll always find my way back to you.” In the past I’d sung that by rote, but that night every word and note hurt.
Backstage after the encore, the usual post-show chaos felt different.
Haneul came off first and was immediately picked up by one of the Starhouse officers, who moved him toward the dressing rooms. Two members of the local security team fell in behind the others as they came down the stairs.
Liam had Tae, who still had some residual knee pain, while I stayed close to Aidan.
Nobody stopped moving. That was the trick with an exit like this.
Get five exhausted performers off the stage, through the maze backstage, and into secured vehicles before the audience outside realized the show was over.
No adrenaline-fueled congratulations. No teasing from Min-kyu about a missed step or Tae complaining about his in-ear mix. Everyone seemed to be moving around the edges of something they didn’t want to name.
Jason was on his phone outside the dressing room, speaking in clipped Korean to someone, his free hand braced flat against the wall. Aidan and Liam disappeared after we were secured.
I caught Haneul watching me as Mina wiped the last of the stage makeup from my face. “What?” I asked.
He hesitated, which was somehow worse than if he’d just said whatever he was thinking. “You were off tonight.”
I looked away. “I know.”
“Not because of the choreography. Not because of your vocals.” He lowered his voice. “Your head wasn’t here.”
I thought about Sophie being dragged down that corridor. About Aidan disappearing after her. About Sang-hoon.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
Haneul studied me for a moment, then sighed. “Whatever is happening, get it together before New York.”
Not exactly comforting, but honest. “Did anyone tell you what happened?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Only that security handled it.”
Which meant either they still didn’t know what Sophie had been doing there, or they knew and weren’t telling us yet. Neither possibility made me feel better.
When Aidan finally appeared, it was long enough to tell us all to go back to the hotel.
“Briefing in the conference room. We’ll keep it quick so you can all get sleep.”
As if sleep were remotely possible.
Back at the hotel, I sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand before I headed to the briefing.
Sang-hoon’s contact information sat at the top of my messages, unbearably ordinary.
I opened the thread. Years of practical conversations. Call times. Wardrobe emergencies. Schedule changes.
And threaded through all of it, quieter things. A photograph of a sunset with no explanation. A single heart after our first music show win. A message at three in the morning the night before debut. You’re going to be amazing.
I closed my eyes.
Only one week. That was all we’d had.
One week of finally being honest with each other after years of silence and restraint and pretending proximity didn’t mean what it meant.
One week before fear had destroyed it.
Suddenly I was angry. At that photographer, for whatever she did to cause problems. At whoever was behind her, orchestrating danger. At the world, for putting me in this position.
And at Sang-hoon, for abandoning me when I needed him most.
I couldn’t keep living in this suspended state where I was grieving someone who was still alive. I pulled out my phone and opened a new message. I stared at the empty text box for so long my screen dimmed. Then I typed.
You left because you thought it would protect me.
I stared at the words. Added another line. It didn’t.
Then: I’ve never felt more distracted or more vulnerable in my life.
My thumb hovered. One last addition.
I don’t know if I can forgive you yet. But I need you to understand that leaving didn’t save me. It just broke both of us.
I read it twice. Then hit send before I lost my nerve. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then three dots appeared.