Page 66 of K-Pop Double Life

Mi-ran stared at me for a long moment. Then she reached across the table and smacked the back of my head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For being an idiot.”

“Someone was trying to kill him.” I reached around and rubbed the back of my head.

“And someone is still trying to kill him,” she shot back. “Leaving didn’t change that.”

My heart raced and my hands shook. “I couldn’t stand there every night wondering whether I was about to watch him get hurt and be powerless to stop it.”

“So you chose to leave him to face that without you?”

Tears began welling up at the corners of my eyes.

She took my hand. “Oppa, did Jin ask you to leave?”

“No.”

“Then you made the decision for both of you.” She squeezed. “When Eomma was sick,” she said more quietly, “do you remember what she wanted from us?”

Our mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer when I was nineteen, Mi-ran seventeen. Two years of treatment, surgery, radiation, the slow crawl back to health.

“She said she needed us to be strong.”

“No.” Mi-ran shook her head. “She said she needed us to be there. Not to be strong, not to be brave, not to pretend everything was fine. Just to be there. To sit with her during chemo even when she was throwing up. To hold her hand even when she was scared. To cry with her when it got too hard.”

Mi-ran leaned forward. “That’s what love is, Oppa. Showing up even when you’re terrified.”

My throat tightened. “What if I go back and he still gets hurt?”

“Then at least he won’t face it alone.”

Silence grew between us. Finally I said, “I’m getting messages from Sun-hee-noona, the tour manager.”

“And?”

“He’s falling apart.”

“Of course he is. You’re not just his stylist. You’re his person. The one who kept him grounded, who reminded him he wasn’t just Jin the idol but Joon-hi the human being.” She squeezed my hand. “He needs you. Not because you can protect him from every threat, but because loving you makes him stronger. Makes him more himself.”

“You’re not wrong.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Then why are you still here?”

I remembered Jin in that Cannes hotel room, asking me to stay. Thought about his face in London when I’d been distant. “I don’t know if he’ll take me back.”

“Then you find out.”

“Mi-ran⁠—”

“No, Oppa. You don’t get to decide for him twice.”

She pressed my phone into my hand.

“If he tells you to stay away, at least you’ll know. But hiding here because you’re scared?”

Her voice softened. “That’s not love.”