I tick through our time together. “You shopped with a credit card.”
“It’s issued in another name.”
So cloak-and-dagger. A gleefully small-minded thought occurs to me. “Mrs. Choi will know you were here and didn’t go to see her.”
He winces. “I can’t believe I’m not even concerned about that, although it will cause a family fuss worthy of a television drama.” He pauses. “I can make this up to you, Ari.”
“Yeah? How?” I wait while he works on a response, because of course he can’t. I’m not even sure why I’m here talking to him. I should tell him where he can stuff his StarLune and cut off all contact.
I get up and look out the window. We’re in a luxury penthouse condo on Avenue Road that Alex assured me was better for security than a hotel. To the south is the crystal architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum, and I get a wave of nostalgia so intense, it almost makes me gasp. Ten-year-old Ari only had to worry about spellingpterodactylcorrectly on her worksheet. She couldn’t even fathom the shit that would go down twenty years later.
Jihoon hasn’t replied before I speak again. “Were you planning to ghost me? Go back to your rock star life without saying anything?”
“No, never.”
Jihoonsoundssincere. “Why did you lie about an ex?”
“Hana said I was too unhappy to simply appear without a reason, and it seemed most plausible. The sentiment was close enough.”
“I want the full story. All of it.” I want to believe him, but honestly, he’s not giving me a lot of runway.
He sits on the bed and crumples the duvet in his hand. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Try the beginning.”
Jihoon releases the duvet and smooths the wrinkles out with a pensive expression. “Do you know how many hotels I’ve stayed in?”
“No.”
“Hundreds. For almost a full year, we lived out of hotels. I’m in hotels more than my own room.”
I’m not sure if this is leading somewhere or if I’m about to get a Tripadvisor summary. That’s a lot of hotels, but hotels are relaxing except for those jacuzzi tubs I’m sure are never clean enough around the jets.
“I’ve been with StarLune for more than a decade,” he says, frowning down at his hands. “The best years of my life. I’m alive when I write songs that fans treasure. The members are my family.”
I wait.
Jihoon plants his elbows on his knees and bends so he’s talking to the floor. “It’s hard to be an idol. There’s fame and money and performing. There’s also no privacy. I can’t breathe without a camera in my face. We do interviews and concerts and fan signings, and I don’t even know what else. Every day I get a schedule, and I obey it like a robot.”
“What happened?”
He looks up at me. “Our last show was Seoul Olympic Stadium. Do you know it?”
I shake my head.
He smiles at his hands. “It’s a dream for idol bands. It means you’re big enough to sell out a stadium instead of arenas. Almost fifty thousand people each show. It was a triumph.”
“You don’t sound like it was.”
“I nearly couldn’t go onstage for the last one.” He wrinkles his nose and looks out the window, gaze dark. “It’s always organized chaos before a performance. Everything gets checked three, four times. Backups on backups. Plans B and C and D because there’s millions of dollars on the line for those three hours of expected perfection. Hundreds of staff members work hard so the five of us can shine for our fans the way we want to.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t go on?”
“I forgot the words to our first song. I forgot our choreo. My mind was a blank. My earpiece was feeding me gibberish because I couldn’t make sense of the sounds. The show was starting, and I didn’t know the words. I was going to forget everything. Every time I tried to remember, the knowledge seemed further away. I was going to fail everyone. The fans. My members.” He’s speaking faster now, and I’m a little scared.
I make myself blink because my eyes are so wide, they’re drying out. “Then what?”
Jihoon jumps up and leans against the wall before starting to pace the room with jerky steps. “Kit saw my face, and he knew. He grabbed me, hard, and he hit me.”
