41. Countdown
COUNTDOWN
JIN — SEOUL
The knock came Saturday morning at five AM, just as I finished buttoning a clean shirt. Three quiet taps. Sang-hoon glanced at me for permission before opening the door.
Eun-ji and Sun-hee-noona stood outside. Neither looked as though she’d slept.
“May we come in?” Eun-ji asked.
Something tightened in my chest. She only used that tone when she already knew the answer to a question.
Sun-hee-noona carried her tablet against her chest. Eun-ji had her phone in one hand. They sat opposite us in the suite’s small sitting area.
For a moment no one spoke. “There are photographs from last night’s show,” Eun-ji said. “Sang-hoon, someone in the audience spotted you going after the woman with the knife, then you on the ground, bleeding.”
Beside me, Sang-hoon swallowed hard. Then Eun-ji turned to me. “Many more photos of you rushing offstage to comfort him, then the two of you together.”
Sun-hee-noona unlocked the tablet and turned it toward us.
The first photograph showed Sang-hoon tackling Kristina Mueller.
Then a series of photos of him wrestling with her for the knife, then getting cut.
Sun-hee-noona swiped through picture after picture, me kneeling beside him while the paramedics worked.
Then me kissing his forehead as they lifted him onto a stretcher.
I turned to Sang-hoon. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He looked at me in surprise. “For what?”
“I should have been more careful.”
His hand found mine beneath the coffee table. “You thought I was dying.”
I looked away because that made it worse, not better.
Sun-hee-noona cleared her throat. “The photographs have spread everywhere. Along with a lot of commentary from fans.”
Sang-hoon squeezed my hand as she showed us her screen. The first read, “That’s Jin’s stylist! Is he some kind of judoka? He saved Jin.”
Another read “I’ve never seen Jin look at anyone like that.” A third read, “If someone risked his life for me, I’d hold him too.”
There were more, in many different languages from Korean to English to Portuguese.
Sun-hee-noona sighed. “There are a few negative comments, mostly from women who are disappointed to have lost Jin to another man. But they aren’t dominating the conversation.”
I frowned. “They aren’t?”
“No.” She smiled faintly. “Most people are talking about the attack. Or about Sang-hoon. And how nice it is to see a couple in love.”
I looked at Eun-ji.
“What does Starhouse want us to do?”
She answered without hesitation. “Nothing.”
I blinked. “Nothing?”
“We leave for Seoul in a half hour.” She folded her hands. “The flight home will take almost a full day. Twenty-four hours is an eternity online.”
Sun-hee-noona nodded. “By the time we land we hope there will be another scandal. Another rumor. Another celebrity trending.”
“And if there isn’t?” I asked.
Eun-ji’s voice remained calm. “Then at least we buy ourselves time. Right now the story is simple. A stylist saved his artist’s life. A frightened idol embraced the man who saved him.”
She met my eyes. “If we issue a statement today, we change the story.”
I understood. The company wasn’t protecting us. It was protecting itself.
But there was something else in her expression. Not approval. Not disapproval.
Patience. “As for what happens in Seoul...” she said quietly.
Her gaze shifted from me to Sang-hoon and back again. “That isn’t a decision we have to make while you’re still bleeding.”
For the first time since I saw Sang-hoon fall to the floor, I felt my breathing slow.
Twenty-four hours. Not forever. Just enough time to think.
After a very long flight to Los Angeles, where we refueled and had the chance to get off the plane and stretch our legs in a city where no one was expecting us, Sang-hoon and I checked the socials again.
“We’re still trending,” I said, as we looked at his phone together. “What do you think that means?”
“I have no idea,” Sang-hoon said.
Sunday June 7, 2026
An hour before landing at Incheon, I stood and stretched.
I’d left Seoul as Jin from Pryzm, international K-pop star, center of a group that had sold out stadiums across Europe and America.
I was coming back as someone who might die onstage in front of fifty thousand people.
If I survived, the scandal of my love for Sang-hoon might destroy my life as an idol.
In either case, I had the biggest concert of my career ahead of me.
Sang-hoon looked up from his seat. “Are you all right?”
“No.” I sat beside him again. “But I’m glad we’re going home.”
He slipped his hand beneath the blanket covering our laps and squeezed mine.
Through the window, the gray-blue water surrounding the airport islands came into view. Beyond it lay Incheon, and somewhere beyond that, Seoul.
Home.
The place where I’d spent three years as a trainee, dancing until my feet bled and singing until my throat gave out. The place where I’d debuted at eighteen and watched my life become something larger than I had ever imagined.
The place where my parents still lived, unaware that someone had been trying to kill me.
After we landed, Sang-hoon and I followed the others down the steps from the plane. A crowd waited behind a wire fence at the edge of the private terminal, mostly young women holding phones and handmade signs. Even though we were exhausted, the five of us stopped to wave.
Then I realized some of them were calling Sang-hoon’s name.
I nudged him. “Wave.”
His eyes widened. “At them?”
“They’re calling you.”
He lifted one hand uncertainly. The reaction from the crowd made him laugh, and for a moment neither of us was thinking about Sara Yoon or the concert or what might happen next.
“We have to keep moving,” Jason called. “Inside, everyone.”
He counted us as we entered the terminal.
“Where’s Grace?”
“She got off ahead of us,” Mina said. “She said she had to use the restroom and would meet us at immigration.”
Jason directed one of the Starhouse security officers to look for her.
“We’re not children,” I said. “She’s allowed to use the restroom.”
Jason muttered something in Korean. I caught Grace’s name, followed by several words I wouldn’t have repeated in front of my mother.
At immigration, Liam and Aidan peeled away toward the line for foreign nationals while the rest of us followed the blue signs for Korean passports.
Grace was nowhere in sight.
She still hadn’t appeared by the time we reached baggage claim.
One by one, our suitcases arrived. The last was Grace’s pink rollaboard, circling the carousel by itself.
The security officer Jason had sent to find her returned. “She cleared immigration ahead of us. One of the officers remembers her because she was in a hurry.”
Eun-ji’s phone chimed. She read the message, and her expression changed.
“What is it?” Sun-hee-noona asked.
“Grace says she received a series of messages when we landed. Her father is ill, and she had to leave immediately.”
“She left without telling anyone?” Jason asked.
“She says she’s sorry, but we won’t need her to translate while we’re in Seoul.” Eun-ji continued reading. “She wants me to take her pink suitcase and keep it for her. She’ll arrange to collect it later.”
Jason held out his hand. “Let me see that.”
Eun-ji gave him the phone.
His frown deepened. “Nothing about the restroom.”
“Perhaps she panicked,” Sang-hoon said. “If her father is seriously ill—”
“Then why lie about where she was going?” Jason asked.
Aidan and Liam joined us. Jason showed them the message, and the three of them moved a short distance away to talk.
Eun-ji explained the situation to a customs officer and showed him Grace’s text. There was a brief discussion, followed by more questions and a careful examination of Eun-ji’s passport. Eventually, after recording her information, he allowed her to take responsibility for the suitcase.
We passed through customs and continued to the bus.
Jason waited until we were aboard before turning to Eun-ji. “I want that case opened.”
“She gave me permission to take it, not search it.”
“She lied to us and disappeared while we were responsible for her safety.” He looked toward Aidan and Liam. “Do it carefully.”
Liam used a small tool to release the lock. He handed each item to Aidan, who arranged them neatly on the seat: clothing, toiletries, shoes, a paperback she had bought in S?o Paulo.
There was nothing unusual.
“I don’t like this,” Sang-hoon said quietly. “All her private things spread out where everyone can see.”
Neither did I, but Grace’s abandoned suitcase and the lie about the restroom had left me uneasy.
After Liam emptied the case, he ran his fingers around the interior. He stopped at one corner and pressed against the lining.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“Something’s inside.”
Aidan used his pocketknife to open the seam. Liam reached into the lining and removed a tiny black device.
“It’s a voice recorder,” I said. “I use one like that to practice my lines.”
Jason stared at it.
“We believe Grace has been feeding information to Sara Yoon,” he said. “That’s why she disappeared.”
For a moment I thought I had misunderstood him.
Grace had translated for us for more than a year. She had sat through interviews, rehearsals, airport transfers, and endless promotional events. She had taught Min-kyu enough English slang to get himself into trouble and spent most of the European tour pretending not to be exasperated by Tae.
She wasn’t one of my closest friends, but she had become part of the landscape of my life. One of those people who was simply always there.
The idea that she had been helping someone hurt us felt absurd.
“You’re sure?”
“We weren’t certain before,” Jason said. “If we had been, I would never have let her out of my sight. But there’s no innocent explanation for that recorder or the way she ran.”
“How long has she been doing it?”
“Possibly eighteen months.”
I hunched my shoulders and let that sink in.
Eighteen months was long enough to learn our schedules, habits, and blind spots. Long enough to know which hotel rooms we preferred and which exits security usually chose.