Page 119 of Lethal in Pink

Me: of course i don't love him

Penelope: You literally hesitated for one whole minute before typing that, and you didn't even use punctuation. You're lying to yourself and you're dragging us down with you.

I stare at the words until they blur at the edges.

Me: I’m not trying to bring any of us down and I’m not lying to myself, fuck you very much. It will be handled.

My phone buzzes again. The tone of the chat shifts entirely—no memes, no voice memos, no emojis.

Penelope: Okay, because the contract is still open. The underground is watching, the board is counting down, and feelings are not a tactical plan, Amiyah.

Amiyah: I know.

She leaves me on read.

Chapter forty-three

Jae

Sharp, stuttering light pulses against the inside of my eyelids. I crack one eye against it.

On the nightstand, my phone is a flat, pulsing rectangle of violent white, throwing off notifications so fast they smear into a liquid static across the display. They stack, collide, and cannibalize each other before my half-glutted brain can parse a single word.

My thumb finds the sensor on autopilot. The lock screen yields, and the notifications hit like a physical blow—stacking, scrolling, and bleeding into a smear of text:

Entertainment Weekly: KAI RYU SPOTTED IN LOS ANGELES? Fans Identify Former Idol in Campus Video. Soompi: Breaking: Crown & Throne Heir Attending US University Under Alias—Sources Confirm.

ThornsUp Gossip: IS THIS KAI RYU??? (Attached: A blurry, low-res frame grab from a video taken at the infamous Sigma Chi frat party last month—the one where I got completely plastered. Amiyah’s head is thrown back, laughing at something stupid I said, her blonde hair catching the strobe lights. My own profile is half-turned toward her, caught mid-sentence, looking entirely too reckless.)

Blackthorn Daily: Exchange Student or Global Star? University Responds to Viral Claims About Veterinary Program’s Jae Kim.

My student email sits at forty-six unread messages. The top one, flagged in high-priority red from the Dean’s Office, reads: Urgent: Meeting Request.

My stomach drops a floor, hitting my kneecaps with a dull, sickening thud.

I scroll. Instagram, Twitter, KakaoTalk—every firewall I spent two agonizing years building is melting down at once. Muted group chats spit out hundreds of lines a minute. DMs from people I haven’t spoken to since Seoul high schools flash and die. Fan accounts tag me in the frat party clip, my voice—captured raw on a phone mic—loud, slurring slightly, dropping a reckless Korean phrase over the bass line that I barely remember uttering.

I drop the phone face-down on the oak, muttering a quiet, vicious fuck.

The ceiling above me is aggressively, mockingly normal. The same chipped patch of white plaster in the corner. The same dusty LED strip along the crown molding that came with the lease and has never once been turned on. Nothing in the room has shifted. But outside my door, the walls suddenly feel three inches closer, the air turning hot and flat inside my lungs.

I sit up. Swing my legs over the edge. Plant bare feet onto cold, dead hardwood and force my lungs to expand.

Rule one of exposure: Do not manage the exposure. Manage yourself.

I stand, cross the tiny hallway into the bathroom, and crank the cold tap. The porcelain basin rattles. Cupping my hands, I catch the freezing water and throw it straight into my eyes. The shock is a physical wall—stinging skin, a jagged gasp tearing through my throat, water dripping off my jaw and soaking straight into the collar of my sleep shirt.

I dry my face with a rough towel, glaring into the mirror.

The face staring back belongs to Jae Kim. Not Kai Ryu. Though the razor-thin margin between the two has always been an optical illusion. The same high, arrogant cheekbones. The same flat, obsidian eyes that used to silence greenrooms with a single glance. On the inner bone of my right wrist, the small, clean ink of a crown tattoo sits half-hidden beneath my sleeve. I press my thumb hard into the raised skin until it turns white, anchoring myself in the pain.

Dressing is an automated sequence, but with a deliberate edge. I’ve never been the type to look like I rolled out of a dumpster, even when I'm trying to hide. A vintage charcoal crewneck—heavy, boxy at the shoulders—paired with raw denim broken in at the knees. It’s what I wore when I wanted to look like I belonged on a college campus instead of a private jet. The black baseball cap comes last, brim pulled down so low my eyes live entirely in shadow.

I check my posture in the full-length mirror behind the door. Shoulders back. Spine straight. Not too loose, not too stiff. The body of a guy who owns his look without trying to sell it.

Before I open the front door, I stand still. Listening.

The hallway outside is dead quiet—that hollow, mid-morning silence of a residential block where everyone with an early lecture is already gone. I inch the door open. The corridor is empty. No unfamiliar lenses peering around the elevator bank. Just the low, mechanical whine of the HVAC and the distant, tinny thump of a neighbor’s television.