Chapter 16 That Good
That Good
ELLA
I smile at Mikkel because, when I do, my head is in the correct position to overhear the conversation between Marc and a beloved Seongan pop idol.
Did it have to be Lee Jang Mi? Did it have to be the woman whose solo hit, “Heart (Suffocating in a Rice Chest),” became my anthem when I decided to beat this one-sided love once and for all? For months I did a whole morning cardio routine to it.
Flamen hell.
Mikkel is midway through a story about the harms of seed oils when I train my ears on the riders behind me.
You would think I would be nearly fluent in Seongan, considering the number of hours I’ve spent reading subtitles, but I only know an assortment of words.
Hello. I’m okay. Are you insane? But then I hear Jang Mi say ‘joaen’.
“It’s more than liking,” Marc once explained. “It’s more like an emotional crash out. There’s an element of submission.”
Marc repeats it back and my hands go hot and cold, my heart thundering in my chest. Did it have to be her?
Did it have to be now? Did I expect Marc to live as a monk, forever devoting himself to the sacred texts of software code?
No. Marc is a profoundly eligible, landed adel and tech mogul.
Jang Mi is part of the unstoppable pop juggernaut currently smashing global records.
The headlines write themselves. In Seong, they’re already written.
Vede.
“Maybe you’ve got a seed oil allergy, too,” Mikkel says, jerking me out of my thoughts.
It hurts to breathe, but I force words from my throat. “What makes you think so?”
His finger, hovering in the air, sketches out a path across my face. “Your eyes are red and there’s a little…” He brushes his jawline, “puffiness, around here. I had my suspicions about breakfast so I kept to the fruit. One should never to consume a sausage of unknown provenance.”
When we arrive at the pub, Alix races across the forecourt, holding my handlebars as I dismount.
“Mikkel is being attentive,” she whispers, speaking English for Tom’s benefit.
“He thinks I have an allergic condition. Honestly, he’s not my style.”
She makes an irritated sound but her mood shifts like a dust mote catching the sunlight. “Oh well. Did you see where Jang Mi went?”
I focus on my kickstand. “Marc led her off to inspect the millworks or ‘inspect at the millworks’.”
Alix laughs. “I’ve been manifesting my future as an aunt to little BLUSH babies for hours.”
“Babe,” Tom says, sliding an arm around Alix’s waist. He spares me a glance. “You can’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
“Is that one of your Amish phrases?” she asks, following him into the pub, swinging their hands together.
Meanwhile, I glower at the trailhead where Marc disappeared.
As a matter of dispassionate ethical inquiry, I wonder if a man who has just wholeheartedly kissed someone should have to undergo a period of suspended privileges before he can start kissing someone else. A make-out moratorium, if you will.
“Ella.” Neerheid Kaas, Auden to his friends, throws a careless arm over my shoulders.
He’s been flirty since the night of the costume party.
Dark glasses shade a hangover and his white-blond hair sticks up in boyish tufts.
“I know I’m on your mother’s list. When are we going to start testing our compatibility? ”
My mother’s spreadsheet of eligible bachelors is a comedy bit to everyone who doesn’t live under the crushing weight of it but I play along. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He dips me over his arm and plants a sloppy kiss on my neck. I suppress a shudder until suddenly, Auden’s support disappears. My stomach clenches in a panic, but Marc, appearing out of nowhere, catches me.
He releases me with a stern look and marches Auden into the pub, past the huge, bottle cap portrait of my mother, and into the common room where he plants him in the midst of a group of men.
I settle onto a long window seat with the other girls, and when Jang Mi returns from the washroom, I squeeze another space for her next to me.
We trade smiles over lunch. I spread cheese on a savory cracker while she nibbles on a pickle until she finally leans forward, silky hair falling off her shoulder.
“Pardon. May I ask for a translation?” I nod. “What did he mean?” She points at Auden “He is on a list?”
For the last eight years, BLUSH has consumed me like a case of the hives.
I’ve watched scores of interviews, dance practices, and game show clips.
The other members are fluent in English, having been scouted abroad, but Jang Mi learned English from a private school and tutors. She speaks slowly, her words hesitant.
“My mother is the queen,” I say, flicking a glance at the impressive portrait. Never mind the humble materials. The artist caught her unconquerable spirit. “I must make a good match.”
Her brows barely gather. “Match?”
“A good marriage. She wants my husband to be suitable.”
“Suitable?”
Each new word is a rabbit hole into the dark underbelly of royal priorities. “Rich, educated, titled…”
“Oh. Neerheid van Heyden. Neerheid is the title?”
I choke on a swallow of coffee. “Yes. In English, they say ‘Lord’.”
Jang Mi tears off a strip of pastry, carefully avoiding the wells of butter and sugar, and when she catches me watching, an apologetic dimple peeps out. “Too sweet.”
It would be nice to hate her but she’s perfect.
“Is Marcus-shi,” she shakes her head, “Marcus on your marriage list?” She asks this during one of those odd silences every large group will sometimes have, and the question lands like a splash.
A hot flush climbs up my cheek. “He’s on everyone’s list,” I say, laughing off the implications. “You’ve seen his house.”
“You must marry from this list?”
My throat feels tight, but Alix leans across. “Ella would never get herself trapped like that.” She places her flattened palm under my chin. “Behold the pride of Sondmark. The Rebel Princess of the House of Wolffe.”
The table erupts into laughter, and before I can head them off, tales of my youth are shared with a shocked Jang Mi.
Idol training is rigorous. It begins young, eats up an inhuman amount of time, and leaves little leeway for misbehavior.
Jang Mi and I should have that in common, but I also have a bent—some might call it a genius—for criminal mischief.
Alix raps her knuckles against the table. “Do you remember the time you climbed in through the headmistress’s window—halfway up a turret tower—to wipe Bodil’s cell phone before her parents could see it?”
I lower my voice, inviting Jang Mi to understand. “Bodil chartered a helicopter on her parents’ credit card to meet her boyfriend in Vaado.”
Alix breaks in. “Ella was so determined to keep Bodil from being kicked out of Saint Sissela’s that she performed this death-defying climb twice—once up and once down.” She giggles. “When she was caught, she had to clean the washrooms for a month.”
I grin into my coffee. “Yes, but Bodil got to stay, and I know how to scrub toilets.”
Eventually, the conversation drifts into other topics and Jang Mi leans close. “Does this mean you have to be with Marc or you cannot be with Marc?”
Marc’s voice echoes in my head—the tone and intensity. Joaen. She’s only trying to find out if she has a clear path, but I feel a flash of resentment. If I were Jang Mi—if I’d heard my crush say that word in that tone of voice right to my face—I would know he was mine.
I inhale a sharp breath. Marc has never felt a speck of romance about me.
Things have gotten a little playful in the last couple of months, but I can’t allow him to pass Jang Mi up just because he got carried away by boredom or proximity or the soft night sky, his protective instincts activated by the need to make me understand that he didn’t call me a troll.
I would never ruin this for him.
My smile feels like tearing a piece of paper from a notebook, following the perforations until a fiber catches and the line swerves across the page. I press my shaking lips together.
My nose wrinkles with theatrical distaste. “My mother would celebrate if she thought I was getting serious with Marc, but I refuse to marry anyone she thinks is appropriate.”
My delivery of this shocking lie is pretty good, but pressure builds behind my eyes.
I want to run to the ladies’ room to, I don’t know, take up smoking or have a cry or text Clara to call me about a family emergency.
Maybe there’s some animal shelter needing an urgent, royal dedication.
The citizens will find it charming when I burst into tears while cuddling a lap-full of emotional support puppies.
But Jang Mi glances up and touches my arm.
“Marcus-shi,” she says, making herself even smaller, and dragging me closer, “sit, sit.”
Blood drains out of my face. It makes more sense to slot him on the end, but a too-small canyon opens up between me and Alix. He can’t fit. He can’t possibly—
I close my eyes as his long body wedges between me and his sister. The minimal amount of room on the window seat means that we both turn sideways and I’m backed up against his chest while he rests his arm along the back of the bench. When he releases a breath, it stirs my hair.
“How did you become a fan of BLUSH, Your…Princess…” Jang Mi is as anxious as I am to move away from the topic of how I would rather die than give my mother the satisfaction of marrying Marc van Heyden.
I tell her about hearing their debut in the trailer music for Yakuza Bloodbath: Battle for the Cabaret Club, and Marc murmurs against my ear. “You shouldn’t have been playing that.”
Jang Mi begins to speak rapidly in Seongan. After a tiny pause, Marc begins to translate, his lips almost brushing my ear as he tells the story of their earliest projects.
I hold myself as stiffly as I would in a Queen’s Day parade and feel Marc’s amusement threading under his words. I’m not about to relax if it means more touching.