Page 34 of K-Pop Double Life

Then we turned and walked inside. While he prepared for bed, I went to my own room, where sleep should have come easily. Instead I spent half the night staring at the ceiling, wondering whether Jin was still awake in the room next door.

Twenty steps separated us, but it might as well have been another country.

I’d held him while he slept in Cannes because we’d believed we might die. Tonight we were alive again, which meant we had rules.

12

INSIDE ACCESS

AIDAN — PARIS

I found Sunny in the hotel’s business center at eleven PM, working through what looked like spreadsheets and scheduling documents on her laptop. She had reading glasses perched on her nose and a cold cup of tea beside her elbow.

“You should be sleeping,” I said.

She looked up, not startled. “So should you.”

“Fair point.” I pulled out a chair and showed her the message I’d gotten from Richard about Park Min-woo.

“Can I ask you something? About company politics?”

She closed her laptop and gave me her full attention, the kind of focused presence that probably made her excellent at her job. “Of course.”

“How many groups does Starhouse manage?”

“Currently active? Five idol groups, three solo artists, and two actors who came up through our training system.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Pryzm is our biggest international earner, but we have two girl groups—AURORA and Vanta—that do extremely well domestically. Then there’s Zenith, a senior boy group that’s been around for eight years. And NOVA, who just debuted six months ago.”

“And how’s the competition between groups?”

Her face shifted. Not quite a smile, more like acknowledgment of a complicated truth. “Officially? Everyone supports each other. We’re one big Starhouse family.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, it’s a bloodbath.” She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Resources are finite. Promotion budgets, comeback schedules, variety show appearances, endorsement deals. It all gets allocated based on who’s performing well and who the company thinks will be the next big thing.”

“So if Pryzm is getting the majority of international resources...”

“Other groups get less,” she finished. “Their managers get frustrated. Their fans get angry on social media. And the groups themselves, well, the members are just kids, mostly. They see their peers getting opportunities they’re not getting, and it hurts. Kang Hyun-woo, our physical therapist, and Choi Min-jae, tech engineer, both came to us from Zenith, because that group wasn’t going on tour. But they both seem grateful to have the work.”

I leaned forward. “Could that resentment turn into something more? Something dangerous?”

Sunny was quiet for a long moment, considering. “You’re asking if someone from another Starhouse group might be behind the threats.”

“I’m asking if it’s possible.”

“Possible? Yes.” She picked up her tea, realized it was cold, set it back down. “Likely? I don’t know. We had a restructuring a few months ago and there were some bad feelings, but for management, this is just a job.”

“What kind of restructuring?”

“Three managers were let go. Park Min-woo, who managed AURORA, is the one who your contact found making those online threats. Also two from our solo artist division. But there were also demotions and reassignments. People who’d been promised advancement didn’t get it because the budget went to Pryzm’s international tour instead.”

“Do any of those people have the access necessary to do the things we’ve seen?”

“The managers have the most access to internal systems, tour schedules, security protocols. They’d know how to position people strategically.”

“And Park Min-woo? Would he still have access to information?”

“He’s not supposed to. But he could have downloaded a lot of information from the servers before leaving Starhouse, and he might have someone in the company who’s working with him.”