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“Hey, are you okay?”
I open my eyes to glance back at Bryan, who actually looks worried. Which... probably means I look way worse than I thought. I can’t decide whether or not I trust him, though, so I shrug and avoid eye contact, glancing past him to take in the view of the city below. From up here, even a city as busy and big as Seoul looks so calm and peaceful, and I feel better the higher up we go.
Bryan doesn’t probe. Instead, he turns around to look at the city, too.
“This used to be my favorite thing as a kid,” he says. “My parents were either always rushing around, busy with work so they had enough money for all my classes and training, or they were fighting with each other. But they’d never make a scene around other people. So when we got onto this cable car, they’d just quietly stand next to each other and marvel at the view with me. I must have asked if we could come up here at least ten times before they got divorced.”
Bryan’s sudden confession throws me off guard. Although some members of NOVA are open about their family histories, Bryan is one of the idols that never publicly talks about hispast, keeping his background so secret to the point that it’s almost like he was manufactured by the K-pop industry. But now I can see why he kept things private.
Divorce is still relatively uncommon in Korea and is seen as taboo. I’d hear so many stories from my school friends about how much their parents hate each other but won’t divorce because of the shame they thought it would bring to them and their kids.
Bryan coughs. “Sorry,” he says. “No idea why I just told you all that. I blame the view. It’s making me sentimental.”
“It’s okay,” I reply. “I’m not judging your family or anything. Is that why you threw yourself into music? To get away from all that?”
Bryan nods. “I just didn’t want to be home. Even after the divorce, things didn’t get much better. A lot of trainees complained about the long hours and nights away from home, but I never minded. When I was selected for NOVA and had to leave the country for tour and stuff, it was a huge relief.”
For the first time, Bryan is letting me see him as a real person, a teenager just like me who has his own crap going on. It’s enough to make me feel like I can trust him, if just for this one moment.
“I’m not doing so great,” I finally admit, meeting his eyes. “This whole fame thing is really overwhelming... which is pretty ironic since starring in a popular K-drama and becoming a household name was basically all I wanted as a kid.”
I half expect Bryan to mock me for my naivete, but he gives me a sympathetic look. “Don’t worry. You get used to it after a while. Sort of. Okay, not really.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He shrugs, and we both look away from each other again to stare at the ground below.
“I don’t think the anxiety ever goes away,” Bryan says, as if he’s trying again to comfort me. “I know lots of famous pop stars who still struggle with it and are secretly in therapy or cope in not-so-good ways. Knowing that we’re all struggling... makes me feel less alone.”
What Bryan said does make me feel a bit better, but it also makes me really sad, since it reminds me how much, along with divorce, going to therapy and taking medication to cope with mental illness is also relatively taboo in Korea.
“Lucky for you, though,” he adds, “the public doesn’t freak out as much over actors and actresses as they do about K-pop idols. Not unless you’re like Kim Tae-hee or Hyun Bin.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say.
My phone buzzes. It’s Sophia, finally replying to my text.
Hana, are you okay? Sorry for the delay. Busy day. I discovered the source of the leak. It wasn’t anyone on our team. It looks like Bryan posted on his Instagram story last night that he’s going to Namsan Tower. He deleted it a few minutes later but people posted screenshots of it and got the attention of the press.
I blink rapidly, hoping I read the text wrong. But then Sophia sends me a screenshot, which is a pretty unmistakable selfie of Bryan holding up the victory sign with a caption that says,Going to Namsan Tower with a very special lady tomorrow afternoon!
