Page 65 of K-Pop Double Life

SMALLER EVERY TIME

SANG-HOON — SEOUL

Saturday May 30, 2026

My apartment in Seoul felt too quiet.

It was the same studio I’d rented as an intern when I began at Starhouse. The hangers in the closet that came with the apartment, which I’d never changed, were wrong: plastic, all the same size, the cheap kind that leave shoulder marks on anything structured.

When I returned, I’d emptied my professional wardrobe case and put everything away. I kept reaching for it when I needed something and finding it empty.

My phone sat on the counter, face-down, notifications silenced. I knew what was on it. Messages from Sun-hee-noona asking how I was doing, updates from the tour I was no longer part of, probably texts from Jin that I was too much of a coward to read.

I’d made my choice. Clean break, professional distance, exactly what I’d thought would keep him safe. So why did it feel like I’d cut off my own arm?

Someone knocked. I considered not answering, but the knock came again, in a persistent, familiar rhythm.

My sister.

I opened the door to find Mi-ran standing there with a bag of takeout and an expression that said she wasn’t leaving until we talked.

My little sister had never really embraced the little part. She carried herself with the kind of polished confidence that made strangers assume she belonged somewhere important. Her dark hair fell in a sleek sheet past her shoulders, her makeup understated but flawless, her cream blouse and tailored trousers looking as though she’d stepped out of a magazine editorial rather than off the Seoul subway.

Not that I was unbiased. When we were teenagers, I’d practiced hairstyles on her and her friends, turning our parents’ living room into an unofficial salon while they shrieked over curling irons and lip gloss. Mi-ran liked to joke that I’d launched her beauty obsession.

Looking at her now, immaculate as ever while I stood in wrinkled sweats and day-old stubble, I couldn’t disagree.

“You look like shit,” she said, pushing past me into the apartment.

“Thanks. Love you too.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” She walked into my tiny kitchen and started unpacking containers—jjajangmyeon, tangsuyuk, all my favorites from the restaurant near our parents’ place.

“I eat.”

“Ramen doesn’t count.” She pointed at the chair. “Sit.”

I sat, because arguing with Mi-ran was pointless. She’d inherited our mother’s stubbornness along with her nose and her tendency to cry at commercials.

She handed me chopsticks and a bowl. “Now talk. What happened?”

“I told you when I texted you from Amsterdam. I left the tour. Personal reasons.”

“Bullshit.” She took a bite of tangsuyuk, chewed thoughtfully. “You’ve been obsessed with that job since you started at Starhouse. You worked yourself half to death to get promoted to senior stylist. And then you just... quit? In the middle of the biggest tour of your career?”

“It was complicated.”

An elevated train thundered past, rattling the window in its frame. “Complicated how?” She leaned forward. “Does this have anything to do with Jin?”

My silence was answer enough.

“I knew it.” She set down her chopsticks. “Oppa, I’ve seen the way you talk about him. Every time you come home, it’s ‘Jin said this’ and ‘Jin did that’ and ‘you should have seen Jin’s performance.’ You’re in love with him.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice rose. “Did you tell him?”

“Yes. In Cannes. After the fireworks incident.” The words felt like swallowing glass. “We were together. For a week. And then I left because someone was trying to kill him. If I wasn’t there, I couldn’t make things worse.”