Page 1 of K-Pop Double Life

1

CANNES HEAT

AIDAN — CANNES

Friday May 22, 2026

Flashbulbs flared like artillery along the Croisette, and I thought about how close glamour sits to chaos. The barricades quivered under the pressure of hundreds of screaming fans, and every few seconds a wave of noise rolled down the boulevard like surf breaking against glass.

“Audience controlled behind the barricades as far back as the rue d’Antibes,” Liam said in my ear. “I’m heading down the rue Jean de Riouffe to you.”

“Copy.”

I scanned the crowd pressed against the rails, mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings clutching banners, light sticks, and phones held high above their heads. Salt air mixed with perfume, sweat, and fried food from vendors who had somehow survived the beachfront’s endless security sweeps.

My husband and I had worked plenty of Cannes gigs before. Celebrity escorts, private parties, discreet assignments for rich people who preferred their problems handled quietly. This was different. Though the Cannes Film Festival was going on around us, the frenzy around this temporary waterfront stage wasn’t for a film star.

It was for Pryzm, the latest K-pop group to take Europe by storm, who were performing the title song for a Korean film showing during the Midnight Screenings.

A contact in the Cannes police had recommended us to the record label, Starhouse, as “international crowd control consultants.” It sounded more respectable than “extra muscle.” We’d handled crowds often, and this one had a devotional energy, which often made it more dangerous than one full of angry demonstrators.

A Korean woman in a business suit hurried toward me, headset askew, her badge bouncing against her chest. Kim Sun-hee was the group’s tour manager, and she’d given us our initial assignments. “Mr. Greene. They are arriving. Please, no incident.”

“We’ll do our best.”

She gave a nervous nod and vanished.

Liam’s voice crackled through the comm. “I’m passing the Square Mérimée. Convoy expected in two minutes.”

“How’s the crowd out there?” I asked.

“The line’s pretty polite. Kids in matching shirts. Homemade signs. Much younger crowd than most of what the Festival draws.”

The giant outdoor screens beside the floating stage flickered to life with a promo reel. Five young men in perfect sync. Flashing lights. Precision choreography. The crowd erupted so loudly my earpiece vibrated.

The whole performance setup had been built just offshore from the beach, a stage mounted on a barge and connected to land by two narrow pontoon gangways. Farther out in the bay, another barge held the fireworks that would accompany the finale.

I’d already decided I didn’t like any of it. Too much water and too few ways off.

“Convoy turning now,” Liam said. “And there goes my hearing.”

Black SUVs rolled into view, turning on to the boulevard de la Croisette and the crowd surged hard enough to make the barricades groan.

“Easy,” I muttered, more to the guards than the fans.

The convoy slowed as it reached the Palais des Festivals et des Congrés, then turned into the secured area beside the building. Fans lined the barricades across the street, screaming and holding their phones overhead.

I hurried to keep up as the SUVs came to a stop near the Promenade Robert Favre Le Bret. The doors opened, and Pryzm emerged into a wave of camera flashes.

Even knowing nothing about K-pop beyond the briefing packet, I could tell why these kids inspired this kind of hysteria. They moved like they’d been engineered for public consumption. Smiles timed to the cameras. Waves angled for maximum effect. Effortless, practiced charm.

The center member drew the eye immediately.

His name was Jin, and he was the one with the best English. The front man, the group’s media face. He moved with a polished ease that made the others seem slightly awkward. Handsome wasn’t quite the word for him. There was something more adult in the way he carried himself, a quiet sexual confidence that made the expensive clothes look less like styling and more like packaging.

He carried it all with a knowing smile, and enough sex appeal that even a happily married man could appreciate the view.

The group waved to the screaming crowd, posed for the cameras, then disappeared into the backstage area. The fans didn’t calm down so much as shift from shrieking to vibrating. Some began moving east along the Croisette toward the beach, to join the concert crowd before Pryzm took the stage.