Page 13 of Lethal in Pink

Two.

My father closes the planner, the leather binding making a soft, decisive sound.“You understand what you’re asking.”

His English is precise, measured, each word placed with the care of a man who spent decades perfecting a language that was never meant to be his. The accent is still there, hiding in the consonants, the ghost of his first tongue living in the architecture of his second.

“Yes,” I say, the word coming out smaller than I want it to.

He leans forward slightly, elbows on knees, hands folded. The posture of a man preparing to lay something out in sequence.

“Security,” he says. The word lands between us like something with mass. “Exposure. One photograph, Hyunjae. One phone lifted in a lecture hall, one classmate who recognizes your face from a billboard or a music video, and your anonymity is finished before your first semester is half over.” He pauses, letting it sit. “The chaos that follows Kai Ryu into any public space is not something a university is equipped to handle. Blackthorn is prestigious, yes, but they are academics, not security professionals. Their campus is not designed for someone with your visibility.”

I open my mouth. Close it. The objections are valid. That’s what makes them so hard to dismantle.

I know he’s right. Logically, I know he’s right. But logic has never been the problem here. The problem is that I'm drowning in a life that isn't mine. It's like I'm slowly going under, and nobody seems to care that the water is already up to my neck. I'm trying to keep my head above the surface, but it's getting harder and harder. I feel like I'm just trying to survive, not really live.

And the worst part is, nobody seems to notice, or maybe they just don't want to see it.

My mother uncrosses her ankles. Recrosses them the other way. The subtle tell of a woman who is rearranging her thoughts. When she speaks, her voice carries the warmth that my father’s lacks. The Los Angeles in her hasn’t fully disappeared after all these years in Seoul.

“Have you thought about the people around you?” she asks. “Not just the security risk, but the liability. If fans find you—when fans find you—what happens to your classmates? To the professors? Blackthorn has a reputation to protect. Their students pay extraordinary tuition for an education free of distractions.” She tilts her head slightly. “You’re already so close to graduating with your tutors. Why this? Why now? Is this really about your education? Or is something else driving this?”

The questions are gentle, but they are also daggers.

I sit back down. Not because I am retreating, but because the next part needs to come from a position that doesn’t look like a tantrum.

I wrap my hands around my cold tea, feeling the chill of the cup seep into my skin. As I let out a deep sigh, I begin to speak, my voice laced with a mix of emotions. “My face has been plastered on billboards since I was just a teenager,” I say, the words spilling out of me like a confession. “Now, at twenty-five, I've never had the freedom to make a single decision about my life—where I stand, who I talk to, or how I feel about any of it.” My voice cracks, and I glance down at the tea, avoiding eye contact. “I've never been in a room where people see me as a person, not just a face or a name. I've never had the chance to learn in a real classroom, to discover who I am without the scrutiny of the world.” I set the cup down, my hands trembling slightly, and press them flat against my thighs to calm the tremors. “Please,” I whisper, my voice barely audible. “Just give me a chance to be normal, to be me, without the expectations and the constant gaze of others. Just once, I want to feel like I belong to myself.“

The room is a held breath.

My mother’s thumb stops circling her wedding band. My father’s eyes, usually so composed and calculating, soften just enough for me to notice.

“Hyunjae,” my father says. “It was never our intention to make you feel suffocated. We did not give you this life because we wanted you to feel trapped, we gave you this life because we only want the best for you and your sister and now it is your legacy too. That is not fair, perhaps. But it is true.”

He says legacy like it is a gift wrapped in silk instead of a set of handcuffs engraved with my initials.

My jaw tightens.

The hardest thing to deal with is that I know my dad is coming from a good place. He's not some evil guy who doesn't care, and my mom isn't a heartless businesswoman who traded our childhood for money. They're just two people who worked really hard to build a life from scratch and gave it to us with love and high hopes. But it's those high hopes that are slowly suffocating me. They built something amazing, and now they're looking to me to carry it on, and that's a lot of pressure. I feel like I'm letting them down, like I'm not living up to their expectations. And that feeling is eating away at me, making it hard for me to breathe. My parents aren't bad people, they're just people who want the best for me, but their idea of “best” is what's killing me.

“I know,” I say. “I know you didn’t mean for it to feel this way. But it does.”

My mother lips press into a thin line, tears welling in her eyes as takes in my words.

My father stands, moving over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back, looking out at the river. The light catches the silver at his temples, turning it the same shade of platinum as the albums lining the wall.

What follows is not clean.

There is another hour of it. Voices rising and dropping. My father cycling back through the security concerns twice, each time with diminishing conviction. My mother asking pointed questions about the alias plan, the paper trail, what happens at the end of the year and a half.

Does the university know?

Will there be a point person?

What about the visa?

The housing?

I answer as best I can. I have done the research. Blackthorn’s vet med program is exceptional. Their business school ranks in the top five nationally. The campus is large enough to disappear in, small enough to navigate. I can live off-campus. I can use a middle name or something. I can be careful in ways that matter.