Chapter 2 #2
That was six months from now. Did they have a concept? A plan? A look?
“But you’re used to that pressure, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t have to handle it by myself before,” Cal admitted.
Lia continued to look up hotels (but which neighborhood?).
“Bomseok was the oldest, and he was just better at handling the company before. And he could keep me calm when I was panicking, and—anyway. I haven’t gotten a clear answer from them about the renewal, but they were not shy about letting me know they don’t have all that much planned for marketing. ”
Of course you couldn’t make honey without bees.
But Lia knew all too well that there were creative ways around it, things the band or the agency could do to push the album if they wanted to.
She followed all the boys on social media, she didn’t remember seeing any announcement that the band lived on without Bomseok, that CoBOLT was still very much active.
She also knew that KPIs like “more sales on 0 marketing” were not impossible to overcome but were never a good sign.
It was the kind of thing a client would say when they were planning to sunset a product line, one where the standards would only get higher, and either the company made money or they cut their losses on a thing that was hemorrhaging it.
Lia had experienced it too, in her last couple of weeks on the job, when her colleagues got a bonus, and she didn’t, because she was leaving anyway, right?
As if she hadn’t worked the same amount all the way to then.
CoBOLT is a second-gen KPop rock band. They are trailblazers in the industry for a stunning, successful debut as a group that purely played instruments with a KPop friendly feel.
They are known best for their bright pop songs and deeply felt, emotional love songs.
Exiting from this hiatus is a great opportunity to capture a new market of fans and move the band into a new generation of listeners.
Consider the following consumer sales funnel:
She had to physically shake her head to clear her mind of work thoughts. Not her job. Not even remotely her job, and not her problem. Her problem was finding a hotel that didn’t cost a month’s rent per night in what looked to be a very upscale neighborhood.
She was so going to kill her brother.
“This might be our last,” Cal said.
It took Lia’s entire body and soul to stop herself from gasping dramatically. Because no! No way. It couldn’t end here! Didn’t he say he wanted to be with the boys until he was eighty? Didn’t he want to get on the Billboard charts? He wanted to play at arenas and big concerts, festivals!
“Bomseok was right. It couldn’t last forever.”
His flippant nonchalance was hard to miss, but easy to see through. A small voice in Lia’s head, old and familiar, yearned to reach out and hug Cal and tell him it couldn’t be over. Not when he was so defeated! Not when he was so good at this!
But who was Lia to Cal? No one. He didn’t need reassurance from a stranger, and Lia had long learned to ignore her fangirl instincts.
She was an adult, and she knew all too well that not everything could last forever, that there were always going to be disappointments. There was no need for delusion.
“When the album fails, the company will have a reason not to renew us. If they don’t renew, we won’t have an agency, we won’t have our music, or our name.” He sighed. “The band will be nothing. I will be nothing.”
To Teddy’s (microscopic) credit, he didn’t tell Cal any of that either. Didn’t convince him to fight the CEO or rebel against the company. It wasn’t how they did it. Instead, Teddy Mertola nodded.
“So it means we can be anything,” he concluded. “I pre-picked some demos, but we can go through it…”
Lia let the boys talk, looking out her window to gauge which neighborhood they were in. Because this wasn’t her fight anymore. She’d voluntarily bowed out when Cal entered the military, and she had to grow the fuck up.
Unfortunately, having been to Seoul only once before meant that Lia couldn’t read Korean or glean where she could possibly be.
All she could tell was that, wherever they were going, the roads were kind of wider, and everything was hilly, which was very nondescript.
It wasn’t until the car pulled up to a seemingly random gate that Lia managed to read an address.
The Hillock at Hannam.
Hannam? Hannam as in Hannamdong? The neighborhood where only the richest of the rich Koreans lived? A neighborhood that now—as far as current living arrangements were going—included Lia and Teddy? What the hell. She was never going to be able to afford a hotel in this area.
“So. Lia. What are your plans while you’re in Seoul?
” Cal asked as they huddled in the building’s lobby.
Between Lia, her brother, her bias, his manager, his driver, their luggage and Teddy’s equipment, it was a weird time to ask such a polite question.
But clearly, whatever convivial banter Cal had been enjoying with his manager was done, and he was now focusing on her.
The back of her shoulder was pressing against his arm and she was leaning just enough that, should someone need to exit the elevator in front of her, he would have to grab her to keep them both steady.
Not that she wanted it to happen, or anything.
God forbid. Being in a parasocial relationship was easy when the person was literally in the para, the nebulous beyond of the internet.
In the far reaches of her imagination, where Cal remained a fictional being that she would never meet.
But then, having him at actual arm’s length was terrible.
Mostly because she had this delusion that, because she knew him so well, he would try to get to know her, too.
And at the moment, she didn’t really feel like she was someone worth knowing.
“Nothing specific.” She was trying to sound breezy. Did she sound breezy? Frankie always called her a terrible liar, but then again, her sister only caught about half the lies she told. “I was here ten years ago. I think I have the highlights down.”
She was here ten years ago with Megan, because Megan had been here on a study abroad thing and of course, Lia’s first solo trip abroad would be to visit her. It had been a great week, and Megan had gotten her a CoBOLT poster as a ‘hey welcome to Seoul!’ gift.
“You’ll be surprised at how much the city’s changed in ten years.” Cal chuckled, and no, Lia did not feel that inside her body or anything because he was so close, and that chuckle had kind of rumbled in that sexy, intimate way.
“Okay, but Namsan Tower is still around, right?”
“Yeah, I would think so.” He nodded. “Just let me know if you need recommendations, or a ride. My house isn’t exactly the easiest place to explore from, but—“
The elevator arrived. Thankfully it was empty, and they all shuffled inside. Only for Lia to end up in the exact same spot semi-pressed against Cal. He smelled so good. She wanted to tell someone.
“Actually, I was thinking of staying at a hotel,” she announced breezily, and she was very glad that she couldn’t see his face. Except she could see her brother’s because he was shooting her a look through the mirrored panel of the elevator. “I’m a saling pusa.”
“And so?” Teddy asked the same time Cal asked, “Joining kitten?”
“Teddy, you don’t just invite people to stay in other people’s houses!” Lia whirled around to face her brother, who was at the very back of the elevator
“I said I would keep an eye on you.” Teddy glared back.
“Yes, but you also didn’t tell me we were going to stay in Ahn Yongjin’s house!“ Lia leaned forward, past the wall of muscle and good genes that was Ahn Yongjin to glare even more. “You said you had a place for us to stay, I assumed it was a hotel!”
“You said you didn’t know who Ahn Yongjin was!”
“Huy!” Cal exclaimed suddenly, clapping his hands twice in rapid succession.
Lia was so stunned that she stumbled, and what do you know, Cal actually wrapped an arm around her shoulders to steady her.
This man was so dangerous to her health, and maybe the real reason why she didn’t want to stay here was because she couldn’t even look directly at his face without blushing, and that was just too vulnerable for her and her younger self’s delusions.
“Children, please, let’s get it together.” Cal tutted his lips at them both, letting Lia go. “Teddy, did you not tell your noona that she was staying with me?”
“But she said she didn’t—“
“Teddy.”
“No.” He grumbled.
“You should have been clearer. Staying at someone’s house isn’t the same as staying in a hotel room,” Cal pointed out, which was exactly what Lia had been trying to say.
Then he turned to Lia. If she was raising her chin defiantly at him, it was more so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. She already knew she was going to fold like a deck of cards if she looked at his face, and she was determined to stand her ground.
“And you.” Damn it. “Lia-ssi.”
Keep. Your. Chin. Up. Do No. Look. At. His. Face. She looked at his throat. Why is his throat so hot to me?
“It is ridiculous to spend money on a hotel when you can stay with me. Also you’re not a joining kitten. You’re my guest. I got new bedsheets and everything, and I would be happy to host you.”
“That’s your argument?” Lia blinked, and why did her heart skip a beat at the idea of Cal buying bedsheets for her? “Bedsheets?”
“Bedsheets and the pleasure of my morning coffee.” He winked, and god help her, she wasn’t going to survive this elevator ride. “It’s a great place if you need to escape everything for a bit. Trust me, I was here for a whole year when we were on hiatus. I was miserable but comfortable.”
Now that, Lia had to admit, was the more appealing argument. Wasn’t that the point of this entire trip? To escape her own life for a little while and figure out what it would be like, after? There were certainly worse places to do that.
“So will you stay?” Cal asked, leaning forward so Lia had no choice but to look into his pretty brown eyes, overwhelmed by him being so close that she wanted to curl up into a little ball and cry.
“Okay,” she said, because he was offering and asking her directly. “Since you bought new bedsheets and all.”
Cal’s face lit up with a smile.
“Great!”
The elevator doors pinged open, and as soon as the new housemates approached unit 3901 (of only four units in the floor, fancy), the door slowly opened to reveal a pair of hands holding up a cake.
The cake was a creamy strawberry-and-blueberry dream that made Lia’s mouth water.
The candles cast a soft glow in the hallway's liminal space, and as the door continued to open, they heard singing.
“Is that cake?” Teddy asked.
“And that…is Almost Paradise…?” Lia asked her brother for confirmation as Cal laughed at his bandmates singing the theme song from Boys Over Flowers.
“Welcome to Seoul!” Soobin, the maknae, exclaimed with a sweetie pie smile, holding up the cake.
Soobin was the band’s drummer and had always been the cutie of the group.
Contrary to their fellow second-gen boy-next-door image boybands, CoBOLT had debuted with a leather-and-eyeliner, tough-emo-rock look, and it had never suited her fellow ’91 baby.
But Soobin had grown up well, like meeting a childhood friend after twenty years and surprise, he had muscles with that cute smile.
Soft baby cheeks had formed into a sculpted face that exuded warmth and kindness, his current perm making him more angelic even as he bounced with excitement.
It was hard to picture him as the one to always keep the band in time. “My name is Soobin. Nice to meet you!”
But then again, Lia thought, catching a glimpse of his exposed arms, the well-veined hands of the drummer. Those arms. Were killer.
“Lucky for you, Cal hyung finally moved to a sensible neighborhood.” An American accent floated through the doorway behind Soobin. “Can you believe he used to live in Yeonnamdong of all places?”
“The agency building used to be in Mapo-gu, so I bought an apartment in the district as soon as I could afford it,” Cal explained, although Lia didn’t really know geographically where Yeonnamdong was supposed to be.
Near Hongdae, she supposed, where the agency used to be?
She remembered seeing the agency’s old building ten years ago.
“But then they moved halfway across the city three years ago, and I was too in love with Yeonnamdong to move.”
“Oh really? I thought it was because the jeonse in Hannam was, in your words, ‘flushing money down the toilet,’” Siwan, the bassist who Lia had no idea was a sass master in both English and Korean, said, tutting his lips. “So you would rather spend money on gas, and get stuck in traffic. Amazing.”
Siwan and Soobin were the group’s maknae line, the babies, as the two hyungs referred to them. But from where Lia was standing, the two thirty-plus-year olds didn’t look like babies at all.
Siwan was the band’s bassist, the international model, and was six months older than Lia and Soobin.
He’d always been the tallest in the band, but now he’d fully grown into his lanky stature and stood perfectly tall.
Siwan was a skyscraper in real life, impenetrable and almost cold.
He just looked like a chaebol’s son for whom all of this was just child’s play.
His face was all smooth planes and sharp lines, the brand of handsome where you wanted to smack him across the cheek (affectionately), and then kiss (passionately).
“I gave in, eventually!” Cal pointed out, like Siwan was the hyung here. “I moved in last year. And now look, all three of us are five minutes away from each other. Happy endings all around.”
“Exactly. Now hyung, what we’re not going to do is wear our underwear front and back to save water. We live in a fancy building now, and—”
“Oh my god.” Lia clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh as Cal started to yell things in Korean to protest. They finally ushered themselves inside, in between putting the cake on the kitchen island, arranging the luggage, taking off shoes, more yelling, it was all chaotic.
But it was the kind of chaos that made Lia feel like she was a part of something, and she caught herself looking at Cal from a distance, the two of them sharing a secret smile like he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Welcome home.” He grinned at her. “You know if this was a drama, we would be a little bit married.”
“You wish,” she lied again, the words coming out before she could catch herself, because oh my god, she’d wished.
Had, in fact, thought it so many times, joked about it enough that she and Megan had headcanoned their wedding (tasteful and elegant, with a midnight blue theme) and called him “husband.”
Lia Mertola was so fucked.