Tell Me Where It Ends (K-Drama Love Story #3)

Chapter 1

Trending Topics

I’m trending again.

Not for a role, obviously. That’d be too easy.

Not for an award either, because those apparently require you not to be a walking PR disaster.

Not even for a new drama—my last one wrapped six months ago, and my agent has me on a strict “don’t breathe too loudly” schedule until the whole thing blows over.

Nope. Today, I’m trending for the one thing every idol-turned-actress dreads: a scandal.

My thumb freezes mid-scroll. The algorithm, a cruel and efficient beast, is already serving me the highlight reel of my own implosion—a sea of vertical videos, each with a title more creatively brutal than the last.

Yoon Min-hee’s Career Up in Smoke? A Full Breakdown. The thumbnail is a grainy paparazzi shot of me looking startled, a thick, hand-drawn red circle around my face as if it’s evidence at a crime scene.

My HONEST Opinion on Yoon Min-hee. The all-caps HONEST—a nice touch of performative sincerity.

POV: you’re Yoon Min-hee’s last remaining brain cell right now. Complete with a cartoon of an amoeba-like creature dancing. This one, I have to admit, is kind of funny.

My name is already at the top of the “Trending Topics” section, a place I’ve spent years trying to avoid. The videos recycle old GIFs in a sort of greatest hits of my public embarrassments: me bowing too low in interviews, crying during an encore stage with the other girls.

“So fake,” one comment reads, already with two thousand likes. “You can just tell.”

My screen is a nightmare of banner notifications, buzzing impatiently. Like an idiot, I tap one.

Jellypop Group Chat ?

The screen lights up with texts from the Jellypop girls.

Duri: “Hey unnie, saw the news… hope you’re holding up okay.”

Gigi: “We know it’s tough right now, but hang in there!”

I see the typing bubbles for the other two, Aerin and Soo-bin, pop up and vanish.

A digital disappearing act. They’re being careful.

In this industry, reputation is the only currency that matters, and they don’t want to be too close to the fire.

It’s safer to watch me burn from a distance. The realization makes my chest tighten.

These are the same girls I’ve shared a dorm with for years, the ones I’ve practiced with until 1 a.m. and traded stage costumes with in sketchy dressing rooms.

We were sisters, once. Our group never officially disbanded, but we’ve just grown less close every day. And now, they’re scared my scandal will cling to them like static. The ache isn’t even anger—it’s just emptiness. Like a space that used to be full and glowing has been quietly gutted.

My mouth tastes like pennies, and my stomach churns. I set the phone face down on the counter, a useless gesture against the world spinning out of control.

On the TV, a grainy clip of me plays on a loop.

I’m behind a club, a blurry figure half-hidden in the alley.

A cigarette—or something that looks like one—is in my hand.

A small green glow flares at the tip like a cursed firefly.

Five seconds. That’s all it takes to ruin everything. And this time, for real.

My life has been a series of close calls, almost-cancellations. Like the time fellow idol Kim Suho and I were forced to deny our relationship because fans weren’t happy that their perfect idols might be, you know, dating.

My first love, my first heartbreak—both scrubbed clean for the cameras.

Or the time a blurry photo made the rounds online—me slouched in the back seat, too close to my ex co-star Ryu Ji-yong.

Ji-yong came out fine. I didn’t.

Because women always pay more, don’t we?

Eventually, my PR team pulled off a miracle. I survived the scandal with some strategic downtime, and little by little, the offers came back. I landed a new drama—and with it, a new lease on my precarious existence.

But this time? This is game over for an actress. In South Korea, there’s no coming back from a drug scandal. Bigger names than mine have been canceled. Careers ruined. Lives lost.

I want to throw up, which feels fitting. But my body just sinks, my legs give out until I’m huddled on the cold floor, pressing my back against the fridge until the solid, vibrating metal is the only thing I can feel.

My knees pull up to my chest, and the old, familiar sweatshirt I’m wearing smells of sleep and burnt hair. Each breath is a short, shallow thing, not nearly enough to fill my lungs. My heart is a frantic bird, beating its wings against the cage of my ribs.

I’ve survived over a decade in this industry. Starved on 300-calorie diets. Slept on practice room floors. Skipped school and birthday parties just to dance until my toes bled. I bow at ninety degrees to PDs who look me up and down like I’m an item on sale.

It’s a simple, transactional logic, the kind only a desperate thirteen-year-old can invent after winning her first big audition to be an idol trainee. A kind of magical thinking.

If I just work hard enough—if I smile brighter, stay thinner, become so relentlessly perfect that no one can ever find a single flaw—then maybe the universe will have to balance the scales.

Maybe my father will see me on TV and finally put down the bottle.

Maybe my mother will see my face in a magazine and decide to come home.

So I keep paying. I look the other way when my father’s “grocery money” smells suspiciously like soju. I keep my mouth shut when my brother’s “business investment” turns out to be another all-in bet on some volatile biotech stock.

It’s a simple calculation: what’s a little money when the alternative is the crushing weight of their disappointment?

All of it—the lies, the sacrifices, the biting my tongue until it bleeds—is currency. A currency I use to buy one thing: my career. My one-way ticket out of that life.

And for a while, it works. I survive the blurry photos, the leaked dating rumors, the “insider” accounts of my bad attitude.

But those are just appetizers. This five-second clip, the one now spreading like wildfire across the internet, is the main course.

It’s not just an attack on my image. It’s an attack on my escape route.

The TV, which has been a low hum in the background, suddenly grabs my full, undivided attention.

My face—or a grainy, five-second clip of it—flickers on the screen, but my eyes lock on the woman talking about it.

A “commentary channel” personality I vaguely recognize is dissecting the video like a forensic expert at a crime scene.

Just a few months ago, this same woman posted a gushing review of my last drama. Now she’s gleefully narrating my downfall, convincing the entire nation that I’m consuming illegal substances. She’s not worried about destroying the career I’ve bled for; she only cares about the views.

Her expression is a mask of performative concern. “Notice the way her hand shakes here,” she says, her voice dripping with faux sympathy as the footage zooms in on my hand—the one holding a hand-rolled cigarette. “It’s a classic sign.”

Well, good for her if she recognizes it as the classic sign, because the really sick joke is that I have no idea what was actually in that cigarette.

Last night was a chaotic blur. It started with the kind of expensive, free-flowing champagne that tastes like celebration until, three glasses in, it just tastes like regret. But the part that matters—the part that’s now a five-second viral video—happened out back.

The alley behind the exclusive Itaewon club was cold and sharp, a welcome shock after the crushing heat of the dance floor.

It smelled of damp concrete, stale cigarette smoke, and garbage.

A small group of us—models, actors, the usual industry crowd—huddled near the emergency exit, our laughter echoing off the graffiti-covered brick walls.

Someone—a model, an actor, I don’t remember his face, just the expensive watch on his wrist—leaned in and passed me a hand-rolled cigarette.

He smirked, shouting over the muffled thud of the bass from inside, “This one’s a little different.

” I remember a chorus of laughter that felt, even then, a little too sharp.

And I took it.

For five reckless seconds, I didn’t want to be Yoon Min-hee, the merchandise. The actress who hadn’t eaten carbs in a week and whose every public word was vetted by a team of PR professionals. I just wanted to be a girl in a back alley, doing something dumb.

And for five glorious, stupid seconds, I was.

Frustration, hot and bitter, swells in my chest. I grab the remote, aiming it at the TV like a weapon.

It misses, hitting the wall with a dull thud.

Pathetic.

The television still blares, looping that damned clip—a constant, flickering reminder of my impending doom.

Well, this is it, isn’t it? I can already see it all unfold in my head like a pre-filmed K-drama special: the police investigation, the lawsuit, the headlines screaming my name in bold, merciless letters. Maybe prison. Maybe a massive fine that will wipe out my entire bank account.

Then the inevitable hiatus—which, in this industry, is a polite term for “you’re fired.” No brands will want me. No casting directors will call. No new dramas, no endorsements.

This time, my career really is over.

My eyes drift to the bathroom door.

Suddenly, a thought hits me—a tiny, dangerous epiphany: there’s a bottle of sleeping pills in the cabinet. I’ve taken them the night before shoots, or whenever the anxiety is too loud to let me sleep.

My body moves before my brain can argue. I walk barefoot to the bathroom. The light flickers on—cold, fluorescent, a harsh reality check. My reflection in the mirror is a mess: hair greasy, lips cracked, eyes red-rimmed. I look like I already died last night.

I open the cabinet. The bottle is in my hand before I even realize it. A translucent cylinder with a white cap. Twenty or thirty pills inside.

I sink down onto the floor, my legs folding beneath me like I used to in the dance practice room. The one where the teacher used to scold me for sloppy turns and messy footwork, especially compared to my group mates’ sharp, precise movements.

Maybe it will be quiet. Maybe I’ll just fall asleep and not wake up. One less disgraced celebrity for the nation to drag through the mud.

I’m still staring at the bottle when I hear it: a knock. Then the soft click of a key turning in the lock.

Shit.

I forgot that he has a spare.

The door creaks open. Footsteps. Low and cautious.

“Min-hee?”

That voice. Kang Shin, my manager. My ever-present, very-long-suffering manager.

I curl tighter around the bottle but don’t move. Another step.

“Min-hee, I saw the news. Are you okay?”

Am I okay? What a stupid question. Of course I’m not okay. I’m broken. I’m over. I’m done. My entire life, all the sacrifices I’ve made—for what? To end up like this?

But I don’t say any of that. I don’t say anything at all. I just grip the bottle tighter and wait for him to walk away.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he kneels down, and I can see his shadow in the light under the gap.

“I brought soup,” he says.

I almost laugh. I almost cry. Of course he does.