Page 103 of K-Pop Double Life

In either case, I had the biggest concert of my career ahead of me.

Sang-hoon looked up from his seat. “Are you all right?”

“No.” I sat beside him again. “But I’m glad we’re going home.”

He slipped his hand beneath the blanket covering our laps and squeezed mine.

Through the window, the gray-blue water surrounding the airport islands came into view. Beyond it lay Incheon, and somewhere beyond that, Seoul.

Home.

The place where I’d spent three years as a trainee, dancing until my feet bled and singing until my throat gave out. The place where I’d debuted at eighteen and watched my life become something larger than I had ever imagined.

The place where my parents still lived, unaware that someone had been trying to kill me.

After we landed, Sang-hoon and I followed the others down the steps from the plane. A crowd waited behind a wire fence at the edge of the private terminal, mostly young women holding phones and handmade signs. Even though we were exhausted, the five of us stopped to wave.

Then I realized some of them were calling Sang-hoon’s name.

I nudged him. “Wave.”

His eyes widened. “At them?”

“They’re calling you.”

He lifted one hand uncertainly. The reaction from the crowd made him laugh, and for a moment neither of us was thinking about Sara Yoon or the concert or what might happen next.

“We have to keep moving,” Jason called. “Inside, everyone.”

He counted us as we entered the terminal.

“Where’s Grace?”

“She got off ahead of us,” Mina said. “She said she had to use the restroom and would meet us at immigration.”

Jason directed one of the Starhouse security officers to look for her.

“We’re not children,” I said. “She’s allowed to use the restroom.”

Jason muttered something in Korean. I caught Grace’s name, followed by several words I wouldn’t have repeated in front of my mother.

At immigration, Liam and Aidan peeled away toward the line for foreign nationals while the rest of us followed the blue signs for Korean passports.

Grace was nowhere in sight.

She still hadn’t appeared by the time we reached baggage claim.

One by one, our suitcases arrived. The last was Grace’s pink rollaboard, circling the carousel by itself.

The security officer Jason had sent to find her returned. “She cleared immigration ahead of us. One of the officers remembers her because she was in a hurry.”

Eun-ji’s phone chimed. She read the message, and her expression changed.

“What is it?” Sun-hee-noona asked.

“Grace says she received a series of messages when we landed. Her father is ill, and she had to leave immediately.”

“She left without telling anyone?” Jason asked.