Page 67 of K-Pop Double Life

Then she left.

In the silence that followed, I sat at the table, unfinished dishes in front of me, staring at the list on my phone. Forty-seven unread messages from Jin since the first one I’d answered that I couldn’t come back.

I’d been avoiding them, afraid of what they might say. Afraid he’d tell me to stay away. Afraid he’d decided I’d hurt him too badly to forgive.

I opened the thread. The first unread message had come not long after I landed in Seoul.

I don’t understand why you left, but I hope you’re safe.

The most recent: I’m still angry that you left. But I’d take you back in a heartbeat if you came back.

Please come back.

I read that one three times before I could breathe properly. I put the phone down on the table and sat with it for a while.

I’d been telling myself that I’d left to protect him, that distance was a form of care. But my fear was actually about Jin’s safety and my own inability to watch someone I loved get hurt. That had made sense in Amsterdam. It had made sense on the plane to Seoul. It had made sense every time I’d stared at the ceiling of this apartment at two in the morning, reconstructing the logic of the decision.

Reading forty-seven messages from a man who’d kept reaching for me even while I was gone, it didn’t make sense anymore.

He hadn’t asked me to leave. He hadn’t agreed that I should leave. He’d said goodbye and started sending me messages to come back, because that was what Jin did. He reached for people even when they’d given him every reason not to.

A boy in the Starhouse Academy with him had tried to sabotage him by stealing his stage instructions, but he’d already memorized them. When the boy’s contract wasn’t renewed, Jin had sat with him while he cried and reassured him that he’d be picked up somewhere else. When he was, Jin sent him a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

A makeup artist had been fired because she sent him out on stage with half his face unfinished, and he still helped her get another job. I knew that whatever I asked him for, he’d deliver.

Aidan had put security protocols around Jin within forty-eight hours of Cannes. Jason had doubled the team. The threat hadn’t gone up when I was there; it had gone down. I’d been working backward from the conclusion I wanted — I have to go — and building the justification after.

I hadn’t left to protect him. I’d left because watching him be in danger was unbearable, and I hadn’t been able to admit that the unbearable thing was my problem to carry, not his.

I pulled up Sun-hee-noona’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“About damn time.”

“I want to come back,” I said. “If the tour will have me.”

“The tour never wanted you gone in the first place.”

Relief hit so hard I had to sit down. “But listen carefully,” she said, her voice sharpening. “If you come back, you do not get to disappear on him again.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The question landed harder than Mi-ran’s slap. I looked at Jin’s messages on the screen. “I didn’t,” I admitted. “Not until now.”

Silence hummed between us for a moment. “The next show is in New York,” she said. “Can you get there?”

“I’ll find a way.”

“Good. And Sang-hoon?”

“Yes?”

“When you see him, don’t lead with excuses.”

The line went dead. I sat there for another minute, staring at the thread.

Then my phone buzzed. Jin: Did you get my texts?