Page 6 of Lethal in Pink

I nod, throwing my hand up in acknowledgement, “네, 그렇죠. 하지만 오늘 밤엔 그 일로 걱정하지 않으렵니다. 오늘 밤은 그저 쉴 생각이에요.” (“Yes, yes. But I am not worried about that tonight. Tonight, I rest.”)

The dressing room door appears and it’s like sipping water after being stuck in a dry desert heat. I open it and step inside, letting the door close behind me with a soft click.

Silence.

Not real silence—the arena is still screaming through the walls, muffled and distant like a city heard from underwater—but the kind of silence that happens when a door closes between you and everything that wants something from you.

I stand there for a moment. Just stand. The water bottle is still in my hand, so I twist the cap off and take a drink, my peripheral catching a half-eaten convenience store onigiri sitting on its paper wrapper. The rice has gone dry at the edges.

It was gross anyways.

My costume weighs approximately as much as a small country. White and silver, structured at the shoulders with internal boning that digs into my collarbones after the first hour, embroidered down the sleeves in a pattern that looks like frozen lightning in photographs and feels like wearing chainmail against bare skin. It hangs on me now like something I borrowed from a person I actively dislike, and the person is me, and I still dislike him.

I plop down in the chair at the vanity and take a deep breath. Time to get out of this get up.

I start with the wig because the wig has to go first. Always first. My fingers find the lace edge at my hairline, work underneath it until the adhesive pulls and it finally gives way. There’s a sting, familiar and dull, the kind of pain your body stops registering as noteworthy after the fiftieth time. The lace peels back in a slow crescent, and then the whole thing comes free in one piece—bleach-blonde hair, styled with the kind of precision that requires three people and approximately an hour, now sitting in my hands like something from a cheap horror flick.

I set it on its foam head on the counter, its face painted to resemble my own.

For a moment, I just look at it. A symbol of Kai Ryu. The name on the ticket stubs, the face on the billboards, the person twenty thousand people just screamed for. He sits on the counter with empty eyes and perfect hair, and I sit here with my own dark hair flattened to my skull with sweat, the roots damp and clinging to my forehead. The difference between us is approximately two millimeters of lace and several million dollars in marketing.

I roll my neck.

Something pops.

My right temple throbs with a headache that started during the second chorus of the third song and has been politely escalating ever since, the kind of headache that lives in the space behind your eye and reminds you it exists every time you move your jaw.

I reach for the cotton pads and micellar water. The foundation sucks, but this damn eyeliner is its own kind of hell. I press a soaked pad against my cheekbone and watch foundation bleed into white cotton. Slowly but surely, my real skin begins to emerge in patches. My eyes have the kind of dark circles that scream exhaustion from a life I didn’t choose.

My parents chose this life for me.

Well, more like handed it to me the way you hand a kid a plate of food they didn’t ask for and expect them to say thank you and eat every bite. They own Crown & Throne Records, the biggest Korean-American music empire in the industry. They met each other in Los Angeles when my father was visiting America on a business trip. My mother had the business expertise to match his artistic genius, and together, they built Crown and Throne Records out of nothing but love, ruthlessness, and raw ambition.

And me?

I’m just the lucky heir who happened to be born with a decent voice and enough charisma to fill stadiums.

Lucky me.

My little sister eats this kind of lifestyle up. She adores the attention it brings, the brand deals, the red carpets, the way people’s eyes widen when they realize who her last name belongs to—it’s just not exactly what I have in mind for my future.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for everything my parents have done for us.

I am.

I swear I am.

But gratitude and suffocation can coexist in the same body. They don’t cancel each other out, they just make it harder to breathe, and right now, suffocation is winning by a landslide.

It’s something my parents ultimately in their own way tried to protect me from. Giving me the stage name of Kai Ryu rather than using my given name. They thought it would help keep the paparazzi at bay, help me keep a shred of myself, a little pocket of identity that wasn’t for sale, but it just created another version of me I have to maintain.

I peel the last of the eyeliner off and blink at myself in the mirror. Without the makeup, without the wig, without the costume, I’m just a guy. A guy with a headache, dark circles, and a dream of being…normal.

A sigh escapes me as I sweep my hand through my hair, my wig watching me from its foam throne. I pick up my phone and stare at the calendar because self-harm comes in many forms. The next three months are red bars and exclamation points: brand collab, radio, variety show where they make me pretend I like spicy food on live TV like that’s a personality, award ceremony rehearsal, award ceremony dress rehearsal, award ceremony post-show photo call, rinse, repeat, die.

My thumb hovers over my manager’s name. I don’t call. I text, because it’s easier to be a disappointment in writing.

Me: 편두통이 심해서 호텔로 돌아갑니다. 오늘 밤 뒤풀이에는 참석하지 못합니다. 회의는 내일 오후로 미뤄주세요. 죄송합니다.(Migraine. Going back to the hotel. No after-party tonight. Please push meetings to tomorrow afternoon. Sorry.)