Chapter 32 #2
The older man looked over to me, smiled politely and said “Annyeonghaseyo.”
I nodded my head. “Annyeonghaseyo.”
Tae looked back at me as the older man – Eunsong, presumably – backed out of the yurt and returned to wherever he had been.
“Your accent doesn’t suck.”
“Thank you. Yours does.” I replied. In Korean.
He blinked at me for a few seconds before bursting into uproarious laughter.
“Hell, Pom, were you always that good?”
“No,” I admitted, smiling. “Anyway, why are we here alone? When you green-lit me for an interview, I sort of expected all of you.”
Tae grabbed his chest and swayed dramatically.
“Am I not good enough for you, Ky?”
“Oh stop,” I laughed, chucking a pillow at him.
“To be honest, mate, I told everyone you just wanted to interview me.”
He had the good grace to look a bit abashed, which was convenient, as it made me feel less aggrieved at the missed opportunity.
“Why?” I asked, tilting my head to study him.
“Because I wanted to see my friend, and I knew that with all of us here, it would turn into just another interview, and we’d be rushed into finishing. We’re not staying in the UK. We’re on a plane back to Korea in the morning .” He fiddled with his phone, spinning the device around in his fingers.
Just for a moment, the soft lightning fell into every crease and line on his face, highlighting every missed hour of sleep, every hour spent drilling choreo. Underneath all that stage makeup I saw Tae. The person who really did just want a friend he didn’t have to pretend with.
“Okay then, whats say you and me get these questions out the way and then we empty those fridges?”
He looked up sharply, and then it was like his whole damn face lit up.
“Let’s do it!”
Because I was so familiar with what a reader might want to know about K-Pop, and about being a K-Pop performer, it didn’t take long to get through my list of questions.
To his credit, Tae was a consummate professional throughout the interview.
Aside from continuing to drink, he was exceptionally composed.
Despite his reputation as a bit of a bad boy, it was clear to see he had been debuted for a reason.
He’d obviously excelled at what Hana used to call ‘idol school’ – which was essentially the gruelling process of moulding human beings into exceptional, camera-ready idols.
Watching him then, pieces fell into place, and my eyes narrowed.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He laughed, lifting his second bottle of beer to drink.
“I think I just figured something out, and I’m embarrassed to admit it took me this long.”
Having concluded my interview, I was now also sat on the floor, nursing my own bottle.
Tae snorted. “Oh yeah? Well, don’t be shy.”
I pointed the neck of my bottle in his direction. “I don’t think you deserve your reputation.”
He scoffed. “Which one?”
He rolled his eyes a second before he rolled his shoulders, the muscles flexing obviously through the thin layer of his t-shirt.
“Any of them?”
He paused, flicking his eyes over to me. Despite our friendliness, our relationship had always been surface-level.
“Ooft.” He grinned, “don’t go around announcing that. I’ve got several images to uphold.”
“Did you choose your reputation?” I asked carefully, “Or did it get assigned to you?”
Tae held my gaze for a while, and I could tell he was trying to decide how to answer. To go deeper, or stay surface level.
“Who am I talking to right now?” He asked in a flat tone. “Ky? Or Kaiya Thompson of Frequency?”
Coming from the person who’d pursued this friendship beyond bounds of propriety, the question should have been funny, and it might have been, were it not for the guarded look in his eyes, the firm set to his shoulders that looked more like he was bracing for a blow rather than an answer.
In response, I slid my phone out of my pocket and in full view, turned it off. Next, I walked over to the mini-fridge, pulled out two more beers, popped the lid off one and handed it to him before sitting back down on the floor.
He rolled the bottle between his hands and looked at me speculatively.
“Okay,” he said after a long moment. “The thing that no one knows about us is that most of this-” he vaguely indicated to himself, “exists way before we do. I mean…” he looked away, eyebrows pulling together.
“The group, the concept, the group roles, all of that is chosen way before the members themselves. People think it’s the other way around.
” He scoffed. “Maybe in some groups it is, but for us, there was always gonna be the ‘bad boy’, and I just happened to fall neatly into that role.”
This wasn’t ground-breaking information. I’d seen it first-hand, but even outside of the industry, it was a badly kept secret.
K-Pop was branded on marketability, and the fundamentals of that included the marketability of the performers themselves.
It’s why some trainee idols went so long without ever being put into a group – if they ever were – because they needed to suit the role written for a new group on top of being ridiculously talented and, lets face it, above conventionally attractive. In short, every star needed to align.
“How did you get put into that role?” I asked with interest.
There were rumours, of course, but no one had ever told me the specific story. Even he had only alluded to Tae’s reputation, but he had seemed to take it as fact. Now I wondered…
Tae sighed, like he was exhausted. And maybe he was. His stage performance, while comparatively short at just under two hours, had been incredibly energetic.
“You ever do one thing, and it just… turns into your entire narrative?”
I laughed, but it was a dark, humourless sound.
“I kissed a K-Pop idol and the world wrote me off as a harlot for months.”
“Ah yeah.” He grinned. “You scarlet woman.”
I shrugged. “I always considered myself lucky that I was able to maintain my anonymity through it all. You lot aren’t so lucky.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said quickly, “I’m not complaining about my life, or what it took to get here.
I think when you do this, when you really get into it, you need to reach a point where you make peace with playing a role.
You need to be okay with compartmentalising who you are, and who you’re expected to be.
I made peace with my role a long time ago.
Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to not be the man whore people think I am,” he smirked, but it was cold.
“But my life is kinda awesome, and one day I’ll get to write my own script. ”
I gave him a courtesy couple of beats, before – “While that is very poetic, it didn’t answer my question.”
He blinked. “What was your question?”
I scoffed. “You’re a terrible interviewee. I asked how you got your reputation.”
“Damn, Pom.” He leaned back on his hands. “You’re a cold, cold woman, you know that? Here I am, opening up about changing my narrative, and you’re backing me into corners with your interviewer magic.” He took a sip from his bottle and winked at me over the rim.
“I said it was very poetic!” I protested. “But we’re opening up here. I wanna know why everyone thinks you’re a fuckboy!”
He spluttered, coughing and laughing as he wiped his mouth. When he’d cleaned himself up, he shot me a speculative look.
“Tell you what. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “You should be so lucky.”
I rolled my eyes and was about to speak when he cut me off.
“What I meant was, I’ll tell you my dirty, little secret, if you tell me something real.”
I scowled. “Like what?”
He shrugged. “Tell me why you broke up with Jihoon.”
My abdomen twitched like I’d taken a blow to my midsection. Even after all this time. I’d gotten good at not showing it.
“Deal,” I said with more bravado than I felt. “Go.” I pointed at him with my bottle, and he sighed.
“It’s really not as dramatic as you think. When I was still a trainee, I was seeing someone. Another trainee.”
I whistled, and he nodded. While dating bans – more often disguised as morality, or breach of image clauses – were technically being phased out of most contracts, they were still common practice amongst trainees. And strictly enforced.
“We’d been together for nearly a year, when someone told the managers. We denied it, but they demanded to see her phone to look for ‘evidence’.” He put air quotes around the word as he smiled, and the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen.
“There wasn’t much to see, honestly. We were hardly ever allowed to use our phones, and we were pretty careful about deleting our convos, but she’d forgotten to delete the last couple of messages from me.”
“Oh shit,” I breathed.
“Anyway,” he said, exhaling heavily, “I guess she panicked, because instead of just admitting to it, she told them I’d been pursuing her.”
“Oh shit!” I said, louder this time, the alcohol making my head a little light, and my filter a little slow.
“Oh shit,” he agreed. “So, anyway, I got pulled into a meeting with the higher ups.”
“What did you say?” I leaned forward.
He chuckled. “I told them it was all me.”
“You did what?” I exploded.
“I told them she kept turning me down, but I thought if I just kept flirting, she’d be interested enough to give me the time of day. I told them she hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“And they bought that?” I was stunned.
“Probably not,” he shrugged one shoulder and looked down, where he was absent-mindedly picking at a loose thread in the rug. “But it’s the story they accepted. It was easier for everyone. She got off, and I got to be the bad boy. Everyone won.”
I felt my face pinch as I watched him, but I knew better than to lay platitudes he couldn’t use at his feet.
So, instead I settled on the next best thing.
“You’re really not the arsehole people say you are.”
He looked up at me from under his lashes, the ghost of a smirk on his lips.
“Ssh. Don’t tell anyone.”