Teach Me K-Pop

CHAPTER SEVEN

JASE

T here’s something that’s either extremely ironic or just plain sad about humming along to song lyrics about not shutting out the person you care about when life gets difficult while doing exactly that with the person who is actually singing them.

It’s been five days since I’ve spoken to Nikko. This is the longest period of time we’ve gone without talking since we started working together, and I hate it. I feel like someone turned off a light in my life, and everything is darker somehow. The worst part is that it’s completely my fault.

Like a coward, I canceled the last session we were supposed to have, a little terrified at the idea of facing him only hours after the biggest surprise reveal of my life. I’d spent the entire day at work essentially hiding in my office, appealing to Brenda and her Quest for Supremacy to take over the library for the day, while I attempted to process under the guise of doing some administrative work. I accomplished exactly nothing.

Now here it is, four days later, and I still don’t have a better grip on anything than I did then. I know this is all on me. I’m being ridiculous, and I’m aware of that on a cellular level, down to my core. I want to talk to him. I want to see him. I haven’t stopped thinking about him or seeking out more information, trying to learn everything I possibly can. I have spent every moment—when I’m not in the library or with one of my other tutoring students on the internet—watching hours and hours of videos and reading through pages of interviews and fan sites, because I want to know what the world knows about him. How his fans see him. It might be crazy, but I keep thinking I have to find a way to reconcile who he is with what he does.

When I’m not online, I’ve been listening to RYSING’s three albums on repeat, trying to pick out his voice among the harmonies. I’ve basically got the songs memorized now, in love with the mix of Korean and English, the beauty of the lyrics and their messages, and the music that makes it impossible to not want to dance. I think ghosts is my favorite record, but only by a slim margin. There’s genius in all of them, and it’s impressive to know that all of the members of the group contribute to each song’s creation and production. I’m curious if the songs are actually the poetry Nikko mentioned liking to write.

I’ll ask him, eventually. Some time, when we talk again. I hate the ambiguity of it all right now, having this secret between us. The fact is, it’s always been there, and there’s always been something one of us didn’t know. I didn’t know he was famous. Now, he doesn’t know that I know. Nor that I’m not dealing particularly well with it.

“Hey, you need help?”

I look up from the stack of chairs I’m pushing across the presentation area of the library to see Tyler leaning against the door jamb, ever the picture of heterosexual athleticism. I can only imagine what it must be like for any of his players who are trying to figure themselves out, having a coach that looks like he belongs as the lead in a sports movie. “That’d be great, thanks. Just rows across, like always.”

Tyler ambles over—grabbing twice the amount of chairs I’m trying to move—then whips around, somehow effortlessly flinging said chairs into the places they are supposed to go. It’s annoyingly efficient, and also weirdly hot. “I don’t understand why we have to have these faculty meetings so often. Is there really that much going on around here?”

Blinking at him for a moment, I wonder what it must be like to be so blissfully unaware of one’s surroundings. Apparently he has missed every email that’s come out about the upcoming end of the school year events, changes that will be made to the building over the summer, and the fact that several teachers and a principal are retiring. “It’s once a month, Tyler. I don’t think that’s excessive.”

He shrugs. “It’s the one afternoon I have free this week. I just want to get home and smash a six-pack while I play Call of Duty before Jessi comes in and starts nagging me.”

“You always make marriage sound so appealing,” I comment as I go around trying to make sure there’s an equidistant amount of space between both the rows and the actual chairs. No one needs to be crammed in here like the economy section of a cheap airline.

Tyler snorts, like what I’ve said is hilarious. “I know you guys can get married now and all, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

I might choke on my own spit a little bit at the “you guys,” as though the LGBTQ+ community is a beer league or something casual—not a group of people who have fought long and hard for the right to do exactly what he’s complaining about. “Tyler…”

“Shit. Sorry. I just realized how that sounded. My bad.” He holds up his hands in apology. “You know I don’t mean it.”

For the most part, I do know. He’s come a long way since we’ve known each other, and as dumb as he might be sometimes, I have to give him a shred of credit for trying more often than not. It’s more than I can say for some of the other faculty—and several members of my extended family.

As I’m trying to figure out what else I can say to encourage and correct him, I see Tyler squinting at the screen and taking notice of the RYSING playlist I’ve had on all week in a desperate attempt to engage anyone in a conversation about the group or even k-pop in general. The closest I came was when one of my library workers, Quinn, mentioned her cousin was super into a different idol group, but they weren’t her taste, and also, would I like to see her new playlist called, “ is this spaghetti al dente ”?

“This is that ’ best wishes’ song, isn’t it?” he asks, his head nodding along to the beat he seems to have now picked up on.

“Uh, yeah,” I reply, more than a little surprised. “You know k-pop?”

“Just that riser group or whatever the name is. Jessi and her sister are into them. I had to film them doing a dance challenge to this song about a hundred times until they got it right because Desiree wanted to post it on social media,” he says with a shrug. “They’re okay. Some of the rap is actually really good.”

I don’t even know how to process this information. Part of me wants to know more, and I nearly ask who Jessi and Desiree’s biases are, but one of the principals walks in asking for a favor and my moment is lost.

???

“Oh, you’re going to Florida again?” I ask as I toss Noel’s barely recognizable sea turtle across the living room floor. She takes off after it, and I’m pretty sure she’s the cutest thing in the world.

“Well, you know how your dad loves to golf with his buddies,” my mom says, sounding both fond and exasperated.

Noel comes careening back toward me, narrowly avoiding crashing snoot-first into my thigh. Her grip on the toy is not unlike some kind of vicious predator on a wildlife special, dragging their next meal through the plains. I try to wrestle it away from her, causing her to growl in a way I’m sure she imagines is very ferocious.

“I do indeed know he is extremely enthusiastic about hitting little white balls around in one-million-degree heat while he and his cronies complain about the weather,” I tell her. He’d tried to get me to play for years, but I just couldn’t get into it, and he never lets me forget how much this disappoints him. All things considered, if that’s the most I’ve ever let him down, we should probably both be pretty satisfied.

“Oh my, Noel. So fierce!” She laughs lightly at the sound of her grand-dog-ter trying to tear the head off of this poor stuffed turtle. “What about you, honey? What are you doing these days?”

I have to catch the sigh that starts to escape before it alerts her Mom Radar and she starts asking questions I don’t want to answer. Probably couldn’t answer, even if I did actually want to talk about it. I love my parents, and I enjoy talking to them every once in a while, but we are not what I’d call close . The two-ish hours of distance between us is fine. We see each other on holidays and some birthdays. We check in every few weeks. They send postcards when they travel, and I give them the most basic overviews of what’s going on in my life. It works for us.

“About the same as always,” I reply, an automatic response that feels less like a lie than it probably should. “School is good; my tutoring students are doing well. I can’t really complain.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” she chirps, then there’s a muffled sound behind her that I assume is my father trying to pull her away from whatever she’s doing while we’ve been on the phone. Probably some kind of needlepoint that she saw on the internet and thought was darling . “I’ve got to go, sweetie. We’ll talk soon. Love you!”

“Bye, mom.” I end the call and chuck Noel’s toy again after she paws impatiently at my leg to make me hurry up.

I wonder if I should feel bad about all the things I don’t say to my mom—all the stuff I don’t share. My parents have always been quietly accepting of me—never making a fuss when I came out or brought a boy home for the first time—but they don’t ask, and I don’t tell. I guess we’re just not those kinds of people. In the past, it might have bothered me more, when my friends were complaining about how invasive their own families had been over holidays, inquiring about their love lives. But now, I’m honestly glad for the lack of questions.

I can’t imagine trying to explain my current situation to her. Like, Hey mom, there’s this guy that I think I could really be into. He’s sweet, and smart, and funny, and his eyes remind me of the night sky out at grandpa’s farm where it was so dark and clear and the stars were so bright, but he lives on the other side of the world. Yeah, we met because I was his English tutor. Oh, and he’s in one of the biggest k-pop groups on the planet. But if things were different… I think I’d want to try. To see if we could be together. I think we could really have something.

?? ??

“Mr. Kitson!”

The speed with which my head snaps up at the sound of Alita’s voice should probably be embarrassing. But I am shameless now, eager to talk to them because I know it won’t be hard to steer the conversation to exactly what I’ve been waiting for a chance to discuss. “Hey, Alita. Savannah, Harper, hello.”

“We have a substitute this hour and she’s, like, a thousand years old and wasn’t going to let us use our phones in class, so we told her we had a project to work on in the library,” Savannah explains as she signs in at the desk.

Harper smiles at me, entirely too sweet for the words that follow. “It’s you. You’re the project.”

Alita and Savannah laugh so hard I end up chuckling, too. “Wow. Thanks. You make me sound like a fixer-upper.”

“I mean…” Harper shrugs.

“That’s rough. I should make you go back and deal with the ancient sub,” I joke.

“Nooooo!” Alita throws her bag—and herself—dramatically across a table. “But we have so much to talk about!”

“You still have so many things to catch up on, Mr. K,” Savannah reminds me.

I could not be happier that they want to pick up where we left off, but I know I have to be cool about this. At least, as much as I can possibly manage at the moment. “Oh, yeah. Did your Lexus guy do something amazing? Stop for street tacos or buy a new pair of shoes?”

Harper’s jaw drops at the mention of “Lexus” just like I was counting on, and Savannah rolls her eyes. “Tang is the one that loves tacos, not Lux.”

Okay, I was being sarcastic, but that’s a fact I had not yet discovered about Tang. Although, in fairness, I hadn’t gone out of my way to learn much about the other members beyond the very basics. “So sorry. I hope Tang enjoyed his tacos.”

“Do we know that Tang had tacos?” Alita asks, as though this is a legitimate topic to discuss now.

“We don’t care about Tang and tacos!” Harper insists. “We need to show Mr. K more videos. He clearly needs to learn more if he’s still getting their names wrong.”

“What? You said there’s, what, six of them? Tang, obviously, Lux, and um, a big cat? Jaguar or something?” I pause like I’m trying to remember, but I’m very much just trying to think of ways to mangle their remaining names. Snapping my fingers, I exclaim, “Oh! Lulu and Nicky! Wait, that’s only five…”

Alita has dropped her head onto her folded arms, her shoulders shaking, and I can’t quite tell if she’s laughing or crying. Savannah is blinking at me so incredulously that I literally have to bite my tongue to stop from cracking up.

Harper slings her backpack over her arm again. “That’s it. I’m going back to class with the crypt keeper, I can’t deal with this.”

I do snort at that, unable to keep it from escaping. “I’m sorry, Harper. I guess you’re just going to have to tell me what’s what.”

“He needs our help, Harp!” Alita pleads, looking up at her. “We can fix him.”

“Ugh,” Harper groans, dropping back into her seat. “Fine. But he has to promise to take this seriously.”

I hold my hands up in surrender. “On my best behavior. I swear.”

Working in a high school, it’s always been easy to form bonds with the students over shared interests. But even at that, I will admit, it’s crazy that these three 17- and 18-year-old girls are the people I have the most in common with right now. They are my best chance to have any sort of discussion about the person who is occupying all of my available brain space. If I can’t talk to him, I am desperate to talk about him.

“We should show him some more videos, yeah? That’s probably the best way to show him. Pick a couple of those members’ habits compilations from the BowlofChiRyo channel, maybe?” Savannah suggests. “Ooooh! We could find out who his bias is!”

Oh god, no, let’s not do that. I cannot imagine what my face would give away if they asked me who had caught my attention or what I thought about Nikko, specifically. “Bowl of Cheerios?” I ask, deflecting hard. “I thought we were talking about your boy band, not breakfast cereals.”

“Idol group, not a boyband.” Harper corrects. “And ChiRyo is a ship name, not the cereal.”

“Ship? But not in a way that has anything to do with being sailors, right?” I give them a goofy grin. “See? I know a few things.”

“And we are very proud of you!” Alita practically simpers. “But no, ships are just like, couples. Two people you want to see together. You ship them.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay. So, do you ship these people?” I ask. I’ve seen enough videos online to know about the speculation about members hooking up, but I’m willing to follow this train of thought wherever it’s going.

“Not really? I mean, I could kind of see it. But like, I love Chita and Ryo, of course, but it’s not the same, the way I pay attention to them?” Alita explains, but not really. “I ship Nix... Nikko and Lux. Even though neither is my bias, I just think they have this... thing, and I love it.”

“Nix. Huh. Okay.” I turn to Savannah. “What about you?”

“Nalo all the way. And twice on Sundays,” she informs me, much more matter-of-factly.

“Nalo?”

“Nikko and Lalo.” She does a little shivery kind of wiggle, and I’m not sure I want to know any more about that.

Glancing toward Harper, I wait for her to chime in.

She pulls a tube of gloss out of her bag and swipes it over her lips. “I hope they’re all banging, honestly, but I don’t ship Lux with anybody but me.”

Alita and Savannah giggle in a way that’s so fond and indulgent, I have to smile. I’m also just happy that they’re so casual about the way they discuss the possibility of these men being together somehow. I know it’s part of the fandom culture, but it’s still heartwarming to be able to imagine there are fans who would likely be accepting if any of the idols decided to publicly come out.

“Got it. Lux belongs to Harper.” I nod, as though this is factual.

“OH! OH! The new FLY just got posted!” Alita practically shrieks when a notification chimes on her phone.

“AAAAHHH! Can we watch it on the big screen?” Harper hollers as she’s already running toward the presentation area and searching for the projector’s remote control.

“You think he’s ready for that?” Savannah quirks an eyebrow at me.

I raise one of mine right back at her. “I’m not asking you to go easy on me.”

Savannah giggles. “Awww, it’s cute when you think you’re tough.”

“Sav! He’s still a teacher!” Alita admonishes. “But also, yes.”

“Okay, moving on from this,” I start. “Before we assess whether or not this is suitable content for me, can you at least explain what FLY even is? First it wasn’t breakfast cereal and now we have bugs or airplanes or something. We’re all over the place.”

The three of them exchange looks that I can’t even begin to interpret—partly confusion, combined with something else that might be amusement—while they appear to silently decide who’s going to be the one tasked with this request.

Harper speaks first. “Um. It’s kind of a reality show? But also not? And a little bit of a variety show? But not really? And a competition? Sort of?”

I stare back at her, perplexed, while Savannah and Alita bob their heads in agreement with her. “ What? ”

I am legitimately clueless. I haven’t run across anything about FLY, whatever it actually is. But I have seen the RYSING wings logo enough now to know that it probably tied into that somehow. Maybe.

“I think it might be one of those things you just have to experience,” Savannah tells me.

“Gotcha. Pull it up, I guess?” I gesture toward the computer to find that Alita is already well on her way to doing just that. “Okay, someone tell me what’s up with ‘FLY’ and all the wings and stuff.”

Remote in hand, Harper sits down across from me, looking very serious. “We told you every fandom has a name, right?” She waits for me to nod, and then continues. “So, the RYSING fandom is called VOX. Remember?”

“I vaguely recall that, but I don’t get why a Korean group has a Latin named fandom?” I say.

“Okay, so, as a group, when they debuted they kind of came out of nowhere and like, blew up. They got really big, really, really fast and got a lot of hate for it from other groups and all over the internet. But they had a lot of super loyal fans from the very beginning, even if the original fandom name was some bird-related thing, because birds like, rise or whatever. But we don’t really talk about that.” She pauses, perhaps for dramatic effect, and I make a mental note that I’m going to have to investigate the bird thing more later. “Anyway. On their first mini-album there was a song called ‘ fly with me ’ that they would do as an encore through their whole first tour. At the last night of the last show in Seoul, Nikko was doing the ending comments and said that the fans were what made them fly—that the sound of the fans’ voices singing back to them was loud enough to drown out all the other noise and keep them going when the rest of the world was trying to hold them down or clip their wings. And they just kind of leaned into it by calling us VOX and naming their show FLY, you know?”

I realize that both Alita and Savannah have gone completely still and quiet as Harper was speaking, like this is a reverent moment. And maybe it is. These are people they care about deeply. This origin story is part of their story, too, now.

“Nikko is so poetic sometimes,” Savannah sighs, the other two nodding solemnly in agreement and I try to bite my tongue as I remember just how poetic I’ve seen him be. “They use wings in all their imagery now, on albums and merch and stuff. The title track on their newest album is ‘ sky blue, ’ and it’s a song for the fans about wishing them happiness. Plus, that shade of blue is kind of their color, I guess. It’s all pretty genius how it ties together, really.”

“That’s actually very cool,” I comment. While I had understood the lyrics to “ sky blue ,” I hadn’t really gotten it yet, not the way they do. But the more I learn, I’m starting to understand why their fans are so invested.

“It totally is… OH MY GOD!” Alita shouts, again, as a video fills the screen. “Look at them!”

“Are they…” I pause, not quite sure how to process what I’m seeing, “...dressed as pirates?”

The thumbnail for the video appears to show the group on board a large ship of some sort, all decked out for a high-seas adventure, and one of them is wearing a very jaunty hat with an extremely large feather.

Harper gets up to walk closer to the screen, staring at it, jaw slack. “Okay, we knew the 50th episode was going to be big, but this is, like, insane .”

I finally think to read the caption. “‘ FLY Episode 50 Special: High Seas Treasure Hunt, Part One .’ Well, that definitely sounds fun. Eight-year-old me would have loved it, I know that.”

Alita clicks the video open and spins around to look at me. “Um…”

“Excuse me?!” Savannah has her hands on her hips and a suspicious expression. “Mr. K! What the what?”

I have no idea what’s going on. “I’m going to need more information about what just happened.”

Harper gives me a once over and says, “You can read Korean.”

“Yes? I mean, I also speak Korean, but I can indeed read it,” I reply with a shrug.

“Since when?” Alita asks, staring at me expectantly along with the other two.

“Since I lived in South Korea?” I’m a little disappointed that what I usually consider to be the most interesting thing about me is not more widely known.

Harper appears to be genuinely offended by this discovery. “You lived there? And you never told us?!”

“It’s not a secret?” I kind of want to laugh now. I point toward the window in my office. “There’s literally a map of Seoul on the wall.”

Savannah goes running over to the glass, pressing her face against it. “Oh wow, there really is.”

“Did you live in Seoul? What did you do there? Did you meet any idols?” Alita and Harper talk over each other, questions mixing together.

“Yes, I lived in Seoul. I taught English there, and I guess there’s a possibility one of my students grew up to become an idol.”

“I can’t believe you lived in Seoul and didn’t tell us!” Savannah shouts on her way back over to us.

“You taught English? Oh my god, you could be a tutor!” Alita grabs Harper’s arm. “Remember when Nikko and Lux were saying in that livestream that they needed to find an English tutor? Imagine if Mr. K was their teacher! He could introduce us!”

Harper’s eyes go wide. “That would be incredible!”

I suck in a surprised gasp of air that I try to cover with a cough as they accidentally stumble entirely too close to the truth. “Hey, let’s watch the pirates, huh?”

They’re distracted enough once the video starts that they let it drop in favor of dissolving into laughter, and I’m grateful for that. I’m only half-watching the antics on the pirate ship, but it’s entertaining enough that I know I’ll go find it again later and actually pay attention. I can’t stop thinking about what Savannah said about Nikko being poetic, and how I know that he is. I know the way his voice sounds as he carefully pronounces beautiful lines about love in a language he’s still learning. I know the way he speaks, a kind of poetry of his own.

I miss him.

Every time Nikko appears on screen, I can’t help but let my eyes follow him, like I couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to. It makes some kind of ache twinge in my chest. Talking with the girls has just made me realize that there’s no substitute for our conversations.

Somewhere in the middle of my library, watching six idols hilariously and ridiculously roleplay like pirates on the search for gold, it becomes very apparent to me just how dumb I’ve been about everything the past few days. I’ve been so busy thinking and worrying about stuff that didn’t matter, that I missed the most important thing.

I already know Nikko. I know who he is to me. Who I’d want him to be, if that were possible. But now that I know who he is to the rest of the world, I’m learning the way they love him. Who he is to his fans.

He’s still the same guy that pops up on my computer and makes my whole day (or night). Laughs with me—and at me—and trusts me with hidden parts of himself. Gives me something like feral tap-dancing butterflies when he smiles at me.

God, I want to talk to him.

We finish the FLY episode—Alita dabbing at her eyes from the tears she cried from laughing so hard—just before the bell rings, and they take off, promising to come back for more when they can.

I tell them I’ll be waiting, as I head to my office and grab my phone. Normally I do my best to stay off it while I’m at school, but this feels too important to wait. I type, erase, type, and erase a message three times before I send it.

“Hi, Nikko. Looking forward to our next chat. Let me know when you have time for me.”

Is it fishing a little? Yeah. Do I feel bad about it? No.

His reply is almost immediate.

“I have missed you. I can talk tonight.”

Nikko may belong to the world most of the time, but on that screen, for those moments we share, I can let myself believe that he’s just there for me. That maybe, he could be mine.