Chapter 38
March
GVibes had begun to discharge following the completion of their mandatory military service, and the whole world of K-Pop was abuzz with energy. It was almost a tangible thing, and quite extraordinary to watch – once I’d managed to reclaim a level of disassociation from it all.
In South Korea, pictures of the group were going up everywhere, and not just in Seoul, but in all the member’s hometowns, aswell. Billboards, bus stops, shop windows. Even the entire frontage of the ENT building in Gangnam had been lit up with their image.
I saw the pictures every day, it was impossible to miss them, and every day it felt like I was fighting with myself. Scroll past, or linger on the images. Label the twist in my gut as pride for them, or… something less magnanimous.
They came out in intervals, depending on which branch they’d gone into.
The two youngest came out first. Seokmin and Sungmin had gone into the police and firefighter divisions and came out on the same day.
Watching the way they stood on the pavement outside the gates was harder than I was prepared for.
I had to look away as memories of them laughing and goofing off superimposed themselves over the stoic men on the screen.
The two youngest members stood side by side in their uniforms, blinking in the relentless flashes of the assembled cameras and shouted questions.
It made them seem somehow younger, standing close together, unsmiling and squinting, although from the sun, or the cameras, I couldn’t tell.
It was difficult to watch, and I don’t know why I didn’t put my phone down. They were so clearly out of place in a world that had waited for them while they’d grown accustomed to being away from it.
They were driven to ENT in a limo that was chased through traffic by eager – rabid – press. The videos were everywhere. I couldn’t not see them.
Bitterness coated my tongue as I saw the way their car was swamped. I shuddered to think what it must be like inside, watching people follow you, pressing cameras against the glass to invade your privacy with no care for the lines they overstepped, or who it affected.
We liked to think that we’ve learnt from the mistakes of what happened when the press pushed celebrities too hard, chase too close, invade too far, but we hadn’t learned anything. Or hadn’t cared to.
Minjae was discharged at the end of the month from his service with KATUSA - the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army.
Until that moment, I’d never heard of it, but according to just about every publication that had an opinion on the matter, this assignment suited him.
I’d have to take their word for it. I barely knew him.
His discharge ceremony was much the same as when Lee and Ace had come out, but quieter, so in all the ways it mattered, it was vastly different.
It seemed people had heard the complaints from the online community about harassing the members, because less actual fans had turned up, leaving the crowd to be predominantly composed of shouting paparazzi.
Without the bolster of a hyped-up crowd, they couldn’t hide what they were. Opportunists screaming at strangers.
Minjae looked stoic in every picture I saw, except in the ones where his youngest members had emerged from a car and had ran towards their leader, then the mask had slipped, and his evident joy shone through.
Gone was the officer, and in his place was the older member who had lived, trained and gone through everything with those two trouble makers.
April
Woojin had served in the Special Forces branch of the army. He’d discharged secretly though, which had made me laugh when I read about it later.
People had queued up all morning at the gate to watch him come out, but he’d apparently gone out the back door, giving the assembled press the slip. No one had known about it until he went live a whole four hours later.
His dedicated followers reacted the same way I had, and thought it was hysterical, and very on brand.
There were some pretty loud, obnoxious groups of people who thought it was ungracious to the people who had waited for him, but honestly, the members had asked repeatedly for people not to come, so who’s fault was that?
Weeks passed, and the weather was just beginning to brighten up with a hint of the coming summer when he – Jihoon, I had to keep reminding myself to use his name – was formally discharged.
I’d learned that even thinking his name felt like pricking myself with a thorn.
But I persevered in the name of my own mental well being.
By now, I’d learned what branch of the military all the members of GVibes had chosen to serve in, and he had chosen the Marines.
I got all sorts of notifications from all sorts of publications, and so when the notification popped up on my phone, helpfully informing me that Sergeant Baek would be discharged imminently, my thumb had hovered a little too long over the screen, stuck somewhere between wanting to open it, and wanting to swipe it away. As if it were that easy.
In the rare moments that I allowed myself to think about it, his decision made sense to me.
He was always so attuned to public perception that it seemed reasonable he’d choose a branch so notoriously cut off from the public. My mind kept picking at the information, slotting it alongside the insight I used to have about his distrust of the media.
It tracked with who he’d allowed me to see in those rare, vulnerable moments.
The ones I tried not to dwell on, where I’d seen past his polished veneer and down to the bone of how deeply affected he’d been by certain events.
The memory of sitting on a sofa, with his head in my lap. Memories I shoved down. Hard.
I hated it, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he had chosen such a physically demanding branch because he was punishing himself for all the flaws he’d believed he had. My stomach churned at the thought, because that was exactly the kind of thing he would do.
And then I’d get cross at myself for wondering why the hell I was trying to analyse someone I – someone I didn’t know anymore.
The self-correction ached, but I persisted because the alternative – letting myself believe I still knew who he was – would only hurt more.
When he was discharged, all the members reunited at the gates. The maknae cried, Woojin and Minjae opted for more reserved hugs, but once the first, awkward period was over, they all seemed to launch at each other, puppy piling on as they laughed.
Ace jokingly called him ‘Sergeant Oppa’, which earned him a shove from Woojin.
I watched the exchange even when I knew I shouldn’t, because seeing them like that only made me remember how we’d spent time together, and that path only led me back to the knowledge of how utterly I’d been cast out. By him, and by all of them.
I saw the announcement from ENT pop up on my phone. There would be no comeback live that day, to allow the members the space and quiet to reunite with each other. I was privately pleased they were at least being afforded that grace before the inevitable firestorm of speculation of what comes next.
I was also pleased that I wouldn’t have to struggle with the decision to not watch. Relieved I wouldn’t have to berate myself when I inevitably did.
Hot on the heels of GVibe’s discharge, I was rather, unsurprisingly, assigned to write a think piece on the global success and media recognition of K-Pop.
After watching the way the members had handled their reintroduction to the public eye – and more importantly, how the public eye had refocused on them – I decided to slant my article towards an observation on how late to the party Western media was to K-Pop.
How K-Pop had been not so quietly shaping culture for years, and how that had largely been ignored.
How it was only now gaining recognition due to the overwhelming numbers it brought in through streaming platforms and physical media – which had up until now been thought to be going extinct – to say nothing of live performances.
It was perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, considering I wrote for a Western publication, but thankfully Frequency often veered towards the irreverent, and I got away with it.
May
I’d decided to take a holiday from the magazine in the last week of May to focus on the coursework for my Masters.
I’d so far managed to juggle my work load with admirable aplomb, but it had begun to catch up with me, and so I decided to lock in and spend the week in the library, which was only one tube stop away from my dorm.
I was just making a do-to list on my phone when the train slowed to a halt, which was why I wasn’t paying attention when the train doors opened.
They swished to the sides and I took exactly one step before my entire body slammed to a halt.
Plastered on the wall directly in front of the now open carriage doors was a six foot tall poster of him. Jihoon.
Evidently, he’d resumed his duties as an ambassador for a French fashion house, and that meant new ad campaigns.
Unfortunately, the people crowded onto the carriage with me had not gotten the same full body memo to pause mid-step, and continued their forward motion into my still form. I was knocked forward, and tripped when I lost my balance, sending me careening to the floor.
“What’re you doing?” Someone cried angrily from behind me, which all-in-all, was a fair question.
Most people carried on past me, a couple even deigned to step over my prone body, but a handful of people did stop to help me up, and check if I was alright.
How would I even begin to explain that my body had rebooted because I’d been confronted with a life-size poster of my ex-boyfriend?
Easier to say my foot had gotten stuck in the door.
“You really ought to watch where you’re stepping,” a kind, older woman said as she brushed dirt off my sleeve.
I could only bring myself to nod in agreement.