Thirty-Four
Someone followed him. Right, that’s a common occurrence.
“Run that by me again. A fan site?”
“Websites run by fans that post photos of us.”
I take a deep breath and become lawyer Ariadne, based on data and not emotion. “If they followed you, do they already have photos of me?”
We pull out our phones. After a minute of scrolling, he looks up. “Nothing. You?”
“Nope.”
Since I’ve remained in problem-solving mode, I bypass the many unrelated questions I have and stand to look out the window. “Would the fan site person have a professional-looking camera?” I ask.
“Yes.” He stands, but I wave him back, looking intently out the window like I’m a spy. Out front of the café is a woman with black hair pulled into a low ponytail, two cameras slung around her neck and her phone in her hand.
“Why doesn’t she come in?” I ask.
He looks out the other side, angled to stay hidden. “Good fan sites respect our personal space and privacy. She would think it incredibly rude to intrude.”
I turn to him. “Jihoon, she’s followed you here and is waiting right outside the door to get a photo of you. That’s not respecting your space.”
“She’s not touching me or approaching me. She’s not threatening. She usually only covers appearances on our schedule, so her even being here is unusual.” He bites his lip. “My own fault. It’s been happening more since I came back.”
This is so out of my realm of comprehension that it takes a few moments to try to wrap my head around his reality. “There is a woman outside waiting to take photos of you, and you’re scared to leave because of it. That’s not normal.”
This causes him to burst out laughing. “Of course not, but it’s what my life is. Usually I wouldn’t care, but I want to protect you, Ari.”
I move to next steps. “Do we stay here all night?”
“Eunyoo has a plan. I’ll distract her by going out the front while you leave out the back door for the car. You and Yeong, the driver, can pick me up out front.” He’s confident, and since this is his world and not mine, I have to trust him.
He catches me around the waist before we head downstairs and lifts my chin with one finger. “Did I say how pretty you look today?” he says.
“I’m more than looks.” I sniff theatrically even as I feel my face go red. I forgot how much I love Jihoon’s spontaneous compliments.
He grins. “I haven’t been able to tell you how smart and creative you are for a long time, but I’ll do that soon as well.” He bends to kiss me, his lips slotting in perfectly to mine. For a moment, that’s all I know—his hands on my waist and his kiss. Then Eunyoo calls from the bottom of the stairs, and Jihoon hands me a mask.
To my surprise, his plan works. While I wait downstairs, Jihoon leaves and lingers in the door so anyone waiting in the back alley will leave to follow him. I give Eunyoo a wave and dash out when the car appears, falling into the back seat so dramatically that Yeong stifles a laugh before he guns it and heads around the corner.
The car slows, and I duck down as the door opens. Jihoon jumps in beside me with a cup in his hand.
“Eunyoo thought it was more realistic to come out with a drink,” he says, seeing me look at it. “I think we’re safe. Did you see anyone?”
“No but better ask Yeong.”
Jihoon leans over and has a long discussion that concludes when he turns to me and says, “He didn’t.”
It’s like those subtitled movies where six minutes of dialogue gets translated to good idea.
“Now what?” I peer out the car window to look for other photographers.
“If you don’t mind, Yeong will drop me at practice first. Anyone following us will wait there until I come out later tonight, so he’ll be free to take you to your hotel.”
Anyone following us. I only nod. “Right, but I meant us. What happens now, to us?”
“Ah.” He kisses my hand. “We take it day by day. No plan.”
I do my best to smile, but the thought of no plan makes me nervous. He’s worth the effort of living with my heart, but I don’t know how. I’m years out of practice. Decades, maybe.
“We need to talk,” I say. “About how this is going to work. Logistics.”
“That will be the first thing we do once our special concert is over,” he promises. “I look forward to a deep and sincere discussion.”
“Ah, yeah.” I hope my eyes don’t resemble those of an emotionally stunted deer in the headlights of an overly empathic truck, but Jihoon takes my hand.
“It will be easy,” he soothes. “If you’re honest with me and with yourself.”
“Not helping.”
Jihoon’s phone is almost vibrating off the seat with the number of messages coming through. He simply picks it up and turns it off, the most thoughtful thing a modern man can do, before briefly pressing his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry, Ari.” He sounds regretful. “This life is stifling. At least when I’m busy, I don’t think about it. Work is an excuse.”
Work is an excuse. Jihoon has a disconcerting habit of expressing thoughts I didn’t know had been circulating in my own mind. When I’m doing due diligence or checking over documents, I don’t have to think about what a fucking useless way I’m spending the time I have on this planet.
Here lies Ariadne Hui.
She wrote memos no one read.
Now she’s dead.
Lost in thought, I watch the night city pass by the car windows, Jihoon at my side with his hand on mine. He’s humming low to himself, little snippets of songs that start familiar but soon twist and alter into new melodies that curve around my mind. I think about cool water washing over my skin and the way the sun feels when it beats down through the thick, wet heat of a summer day. He changes the tune, and it turns bluer, filling me with longing for a place I’ve never been. Kaukokaipuu, the Finns call it. I write it on the first page of each new travel notebook.
I don’t realize I’ve let out a lingering sigh until Jihoon calls my name. “Ari?”
“Yes?” My eyes almost hurt from the intensity of looking out the window while not seeing what’s in front of me.
“Tell me what’s bothering you.” He shifts on the seat. “Is it me?”
“Not you.” I lift his hand to more comfortably fit my fingers with his and nestle my head back into the car seat to look through the sunroof. “You said work is an excuse.”
“I did.”
“Work has been my life for as long as I remember,” I say to the distant sky. “First school, then the office. My parents expected the best from me. You know Phoebe dropped out and is basically a nomad. It drives my father nuts to see her waste her life.”
“Yet you seem envious of her.”
“I don’t know if law was my goal or Dad’s. Phoebe got to do what she wanted, and I’m stuck with what he wanted for me.” I say it louder than I planned and then stop, shocked when I hear the words and how angry they are.
“Then, Ari, make a different choice. Like your sister did.”
I glare at him. Easy enough to say when it’s not you who has to deal with the backlash. “A choice that will worry and disappoint them the way she did? I was always the good one.”
“They survived your sister leaving school.”
“Sure, but they weren’t happy.” I make a face. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
He smiles and looks down at me. “I’ll be here when you do.” My hair is over my shoulder, and he slides a lock through his fingers before deftly tying it into a loose knot and undoing it. “This is the first time I haven’t adored a comeback,” he says thoughtfully. “Before, I was worried and tired but excited for fans to hear our work.”
“Why?”
“When I was with you in Toronto, I had no expectations on me. I could do whatever I wanted, without people fussing about where I was or what I was wearing. No one watched me. I had space to think and dream.”
Although I’ve slowly come to grips with the idea that being an international celebrity isn’t all skittles and beer, part of me wants to point out that being a millionaire with staff to take care of the boring parts of life is hardly a tragedy. That would be grossly unfair because neither is being a lawyer with loving family and friends and kick-ass benefits and a pension plan. I have all that I should need to be happy; so does Jihoon. Yet both of us greedily want more, to selfishly carve out the extra that makes life worth living instead of going through the motions every day.
“What did you dream about?” I ask.
“Impossible things. You know I write some of our songs.” He rubs his arms. “People think mine are fun ones, light and happy. I want to grow and move in different directions.”
“Then you should.”
His smile is sardonic. “The company likes things how they are.”
“Not messing with a good thing,” I say, remembering the conversation we had on my balcony. “You said you tried to do things on the side. Was it your songwriting?”
He freezes up, and this tension is so unusual, I turn to face him. “Jihoon?”
He only shakes his head, and soon we pull up to the Newlight building. “Turn to me for a second,” he says. He snaps a photo, then gives me a lingering kiss. “I’ll see you soon. I’ll find the time.”
This time when he leaves, he takes what remained of my regret and sadness with him. It’s going to be hard, but I’m in it to win it, even if it takes the open communication Jihoon threatened. I can do that for him.
Back at the hotel, I’m alone with my thoughts until an email from Yesterly and Havings comes through. It’s to all staff, congratulating Brittany on her nomination for a prestigious excellence award, the one I hoped they would select me for.
I wait for the fury to come. It doesn’t. It stings but it doesn’t burn.
Another email comes in, this time from Luxe. Ines has found someone to take on the role she offered me, so no need to worry.
I get into bed and pull the duvet over my head. My entire body feels empty, and for the first time, work isn’t there to soothe me. A loudspeaker squawks outside my window, and when a peppy song starts to play, I peer out of my blanket cave, wondering what it is. Alex would know. I should have had him take me on a musical tour of the city to experience K-pop myself instead of learning it from a computer screen.
A musical tour of the city. Ideas start to flow as I consider how this could look.
Excited, I sit up and start to make some notes. Slowly, without me noticing, anything to do with Yesterly and Havings drifts quietly to the back of my mind.
“Water,” rasps Alex, hanging in my doorway with an ashen face. “I beg you. Coffee.”
I give a weak wave toward the coffeemaker on the desk, and he stumbles in.
“That was…” I pause as I try to force my lethargic brain into thinking while controlling my nausea. “Intense.”
The last day working with Newlight had passed without incident. Then they took us out to say goodbye.
I was unprepared.
The night had started well, at a BBQ place familiar to me from the ones Hana and I go to in Koreatown, with a little vented brazier on the table to cook the meat. I nibbled on some fried tofu and drank the first of what would be many drinks.
So many drinks. I texted Jihoon before we left, and he warned me it would be a long night. I didn’t realize how long.
“They must have iron livers,” says Alex now with deep respect.
After dinner, we went to the noraebang for karaoke and more drinking. Thank God I’d had the foresight to turn off my phone, which saved me the dread of one of the Newlight staff seeing a text from Jihoon and the more dominant fear of sending him an incredibly bad booty call message.
Makeup sex rocks, but I’m trying to be classy here.
Clutching our coffees, we go to Alex’s room so he can finish packing. He struggles as he lifts his bag to check the weight. “Who would have guessed souvenirs were so heavy?” he says.
“You bought StarLune snow globes for your team and the convenience store’s entire stock of spicy dried squid snacks for Ben.”
“Worth it.” Alex’s face brightens as it always does when someone says his husband’s name. “He loves those snacks and they’re impossible to find at home. Did you see where I put the honey butter chips?”
“We ate them last night when we got back to the hotel.”
Alex glances into the trash, which contains the empty, crackly evidence of our drunken cravings. “Shoot. We ate the crab chips, too.”
Alex finishes packing, and we go out for lunch. Hyesu had recommended haejangguk, which is apparently a hangover-curing soup, so we get that for Alex and sundubu jjigae for me.
“Are you happy with the week?” I ask, picking up the wide metal spoon when the food comes. The rich smell of the soft tofu stew makes me feel better already.
“I didn’t get together with an idol like some people, but it was productive.” He ignores the look I give him and eats some banchan. “I got tons of content for my podcast, too.”
Alex runs a music history podcast on the side. This seems like a good segue to my musical tour idea.
“I was thinking about your podcast,” I say, all faux casual, no big deal. “What do you think about running music history tours?”
“What, in Toronto?” He sounds doubtful, and I try to not take it negatively.
“No, like you take a bunch of like-minded nerds on a music history tour in London or LA or whatever. Luxe does the planning. You host.”
There’s a long pause. “Do you have my phone tapped?”
“Why? You like it?”
“I’ve been playing with the same idea.” Alex sounds excited and he’s never overtly excited—he’s too much the smooth PR guy. “I was going to ask you for advice. The trip you planned when Ben and I went to Greece was incredible.”
This makes me laugh, partly with relief and partly with excitement.
“I already have something,” I say. I’d taken the notes from the other night and turned them into a proposal.
“Send it to me. I’ll read it now.”
Alex spends the rest of lunch shifting between his food and making suggestions on my proposal. Once we’re happy, we pause.
“Will Yesterly and Havings be okay with you doing this?” he asks, nibbling on some bean sprouts.
I shrug. “Gotta live while you can.”
He shoots me an astounded look. “Who are you? Ari would never say such a thing.”
I ignore that. “I’ll send it to Ines later. I think she’ll like it.”
We finish eating, and after Alex heads to the airport, I sit on my bed. It’s with unfamiliar delight and no small degree of stress that I switch on my out-of-office email notifications.
I’m officially on vacation, so I pull my proposal up on my laptop to read it over one more time. Alex’s suggestions were solid, and I can visualize how the tour would work. I know it would do well.
Then I send it. Like that, one click and it’s gone. Looking at my cursor on the screen, I wonder why there are no undercurrents of should or what about. Instead my mind ticks over more ideas in a satisfied, steady rhythm.
That Yesterly and Havings is not front and center is disconcerting because it’s been one of my only concerns for my entire professional life. What I can do to impress Richard. How to get more work. How to win. It was all I thought I wanted, but work was a thing I did, not a thing I was deeply connected to. It was transactional.
Now something’s shifted, and I don’t know who I am anymore. We’d done a Who Is Jihoon Day in Toronto. Now I wish I’d done that Who Is Ari Day as well.
It would have been useful.