Thirty-Eight
“Don’t worry, you look good.” Hana checks me over for the tenth time. “I can’t believe you had the option to look like this all the time and deliberately chose not to. What’s the matter with you?”
In the end, I went for all white, a pair of high-waisted, wide-legged pants cinched with a silver belt and a satin halter tank. The shoes are red flats, and my hair is in a high pony that shows off my new bangs and my new earrings. My heart hammered when I looked in the mirror, and Hana’s quiet, “Damn, you look expensive,” when I came out didn’t help. My Cartier watch, which I brought with me, is clasped around my wrist.
Yeong drops us at a private side entrance, and we make our way to our seats. They’re incredible, front row and in a bend of the stage. It’s a smaller space—only seating twenty thousand—and Hana tells me that’s deliberate, to give an intimate feel. StarLune videos are already playing on the screens that line the stage.
People scan me over when I walk by, and it’s hard to stay calm. I’m not used to being looked at like this, but part of me likes it.
Full disclosure: all of me likes it. I spend so much time at work trying to blend in that I get a subversive pleasure out of being noticed for looking good as myself, not for looking different.
My phone buzzes. Are you here?
I send him a selfie of Hana and I, and my phone rings almost immediately.
“Look to the left,” Jihoon says. “Your left.”
There’s a set onstage with a small black curtain I wouldn’t have noticed unless I was looking. It twitches, and then I see him. It’s only a moment but enough to notice his smile when he sees me.
“You look…” He doesn’t continue as a burst of conversation comes from behind him. “Stay there, and I’ll have someone bring you backstage after.”
“Like a groupie.”
“Yah, Ari, you know better.”
“Thank you for the gifts. I love them.”
“You deserve to have things as special as you, and I thought the jacket would be more welcome than the shoes I promised you back in Toronto.” He pauses. “Enjoy yourself.”
Smiling from the compliment, I pass on the message to Hana, who is ecstatic at the idea of seeing the band after the show. “They’ll be sweaty.” She swoons. “Panting from exertion. Chests heaving.”
“Gross.”
“Shut up.” She laughs. “It’s fun to look.”
Hana hands me a pair of earplugs. There’s no opening band for StarLune concerts, and the lights cut out at exactly seven, leaving us in a warm shared darkness lit only with the light sticks that fans wave around. A screen lights up in center stage with a video of StarLune set to a hypnotic driving beat.
Beside me, Hana’s already screaming. I’m too stunned to even think. This entire experience is physical and visual overload. The noise batters at me, and I want to cover my ears with my hands. I’ve never been to a real concert in my life, and this is so much different than I expected that it’s hard to take in. It’s not a show but an extravaganza. There are screens hanging everywhere. There’s infrastructure.
Jihoon’s growl blasts out from the speakers. Hana jerks me forward, screaming even louder.
When the white lights pierce the darkness of the venue like knives, we’re both hugging and yelling. It’s so cathartic that when Jihoon’s voice stops and the pounding beat starts up again, my knees weaken. The screens explode with red lights, and now Daehyun’s voice roars out, attacking me right down to my bones. On the other side of me, a girl shrieks as if she’s been stabbed, and the light sticks held by the fans pulse with the music in a kaleidoscope of coordinated color all around the arena. People are chanting, and it takes me a minute to realize it’s the band members’ names.
By the time the center screen lifts, I can barely breathe. StarLune rises from the stage backlit with spotlights, and all they do is stand there as they’re revealed to the howling audience. The lights flash on, and they pose for a single perfect moment. They’re dressed in white, gold, and black, complementary but not identical. Jihoon’s face, the flawless mask of an idol, fills the screens. His lips are perfectly pouted, his jawline sharp enough to cut diamond. He doesn’t look real.
Jihoon breaks the pose to glance at Kit, who’s next to him, and the crowd roars. He turns back and tilts his head as if judging us. He doesn’t smile.
The crowd loves it. I love it.
Jihoon’s the first to move down the flight of steps, one hand in his pocket and his swagger so utterly breathtaking that Hana pounds me on the arm. “Holy shit, that’s my boy,” she hollers.
I can’t answer because I have my hands up to my mouth like I’ve seen a ghost. The five of them walk to the center of the stage and stop. For a blessed moment, the crowd’s din lowers to only thunderous.
Then Jihoon lifts his mic, and the five move as one.
I don’t take my eyes off him for almost three hours, and by the time they’re done, both Hana and I collapse back into our seats, spent. Except for a few breaks to change outfits—when they would play videos on the screens that showed StarLune as spies—and to talk to the audience, the band had been in action the entire time.
“That was…” I can’t even finish and flutter my shirt to try to dry some of the sweat.
“It was.” Hana’s voice is so hoarse from screaming, she can barely speak over a whisper.
I thought I’d feel silly for cheering Jihoon on, like I was some sort of rah-rah fangirl, but the hell with that. He was astounding, but he wasn’t Jihoon on that stage. He was Min, StarLune vocalist and idol, and he was utterly in his element. He deserved to be admired for the work he put in and how he pulled it off. Around us, people are buzzing and taking photos. I’m too wrung out to move.
When the venue is about half-empty, a man comes to the barricade, security cards dangling from his neck, and makes eye contact with us. He nods to an exit around the side of the stage.
Beside me, Hana is chanting, “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” and I know exactly what she means, because although I’m trying to be cool, the whole backstage thing is nerve-racking. Part of me wants to tell Hana I’ll meet her at home because I feel suddenly shy about seeing Jihoon. He was alive on that stage. No matter what he said, he was made for this.
We follow the security guy through a maze of cinder-block corridors, and when we arrive, the space is nothing like I expect. For one, it’s small and crowded, with women in artistically ripped crew sweatshirts chattering as they sort through portable hanging closets, people eating from a buffet, and people handing each other drinks as they lounge on black leather couches.
I hear Jihoon laugh in the corner, and my eyes seek him out. Here in this busy little room, he’s nothing like the megastar I saw onstage. He’s only Jihoon. His gaze catches mine, and for a moment, there’s no one in the room but the two of us.
Of course, like all perfect moments, it slips away almost before I notice it happening.
A silence settles as people see us. Jihoon bounces over to make an introduction to the room at large. When Hana bows and I wave, the eyes on us become less distrustful. I’m about to ask how he introduced me, but Jihoon leans over.
“What did you think?” He drips with sweat, shirt open halfway down his chest and an ice pack draped around the back of his neck.
“I loved it.” That’s all I can say, but Jihoon smiles at me as he pushes his hair off his face. “You were unreal.”
“We worked hard,” he says.
Kit comes up, and we look at each other.
“I could tell,” I say honestly. “You were fantastic.”
Kit’s smile is reluctant but real as he gives me a small bow. “Thank you.” He pulls Hana away to chat with him and Daehyun. Apart from a slight tap on my arm, I barely notice her go because I’m filled with conflicting emotions as I try to separate the man in front of me from the performer I witnessed dominating the stage and twenty thousand people.
“You look beautiful,” Jihoon says. He leans down, but then his eyes flick around the room and he straightens. “Do you want to see what it’s like on the stage?”
“Yes.” The weight of the stares around us makes me nervous.
“We need to wait for the arena to clear out.” He brings me to an empty side room and collapses on the couch.
I sit beside him. “What’s it like, being onstage?”
He smiles, and his nose wrinkles adorably. “When it’s good, it’s a mix of nervousness and excitement and anticipation. Knowing a performance is coming fills me with a buzz, and being onstage is the only way I can release it. It took me a long time to get here, though.”
“It did?”
“I had such bad stage fright in the beginning they almost cut me from the band. Compare that to Kit hyeong. For him, performing is like an addiction. He craves the stage for itself, but I want only the connection the stage brings.”
He sees me frowning.
“When I started, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an idol, but I knew music was for me. Our producer asked me, ‘Do you want to write songs or make music?’”
“That sounds like the same thing.”
“It’s not. I could be in a tiny room in Busan writing songs, but I need to share them with others and get their ideas. I need them out in the world. It’s a constant tension between fame, which I endure, and creating, which I need. Before you say anything, I accept I love the attention I get onstage.” He gives me a wry look. “Contradictions.”
“Is it worth it?”
He rubs his face against the side of my neck. His skin is cool from the ice pack. “I don’t know.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Think about it later.” He runs his lips along my neck, making me shudder, before settling back with a low growl. “I need to stop. Anyone can come in.”
Good call. There’s a snack table, and Jihoon takes another bottle of water and a plate for the two of us to pick at. It’s a combination of Korean and Western food, a mix of junk and healthy. Jihoon eats chips and carrots, sushi and pizza, while I work through the doughnuts, twisty and covered with sugar. Finally, he glances at the clock.
“That’s enough time,” he says, standing and then extending his hands to haul me up.
I follow him back through the corridors to what looks like a lift. One hand catches me around the waist as the other pulls my ponytail off my shoulder.
“Wait a moment,” he says into my neck. Then he calls out to a hidden someone, and a grunt comes from somewhere in the back.
“The crew is safe. Everyone works for Newlight and signs NDAs with their contracts.” Jihoon steps with me onto a platform. “Hold on.”
That’s all the warning he gives. The platform rises, and when I crane my neck up, I see what I thought was the bottom of the stage is actually a hole and the darkness is the distant arena ceiling.
I try to imagine what it feels like to be Jihoon, standing here as people scream for him, but I can’t. It’s completely foreign to me.
“How do you feel?” I ask. “When the platform rises?”
“For this show, we started off with mics instead of headsets. I think of how it feels, pressing into my palm.” He traces a line down my hand. “I listen to the crowd.” He nods to the left. “Sangjun stood there, and he always waves at me before we start a show. That’s when it feels real.”
The platform surfaces, and I take a cautious step onto the stage. It’s bigger than it looked from my seat, and there are crosses and lines taped on the floor. Quietly I watch Jihoon as he stares out at the empty seats, his face blank.
“What if something goes wrong when you’re onstage?”
“Things go wrong all the time. Daehyun once fell and took me down with him. We nearly rolled off the stage. I’ve dropped hand mics. One ended up in a fan’s lap, and she fainted. I forgot the lines to a song, and Xin covered for me. Tonight the lights were wrong for the second song, and Kit hyeong’s voice broke. A few years ago, he would have cried all night.”
To think I get stressed stumbling on a curb if there are people around.
Jihoon’s now talking softly as if to himself. “We’ve played hundreds of live shows, and there are two things we can depend on. Something will always go wrong.”
He pauses until I prod him. “The second?”
“That we’ll get through it together.”
There it is, that utter faith in his friendships that brings a lump to my throat. It’s not only the rush of the adulation I don’t want to compete with—it’s this, his loyalty to his friends. That’s why he came back to Seoul in the first place, because he couldn’t let them down.
I hug him close. “You didn’t look nervous at all.”
He leans against me. “We show it in different ways,” he says. “Daehyun paces and whispers his lines. Xin does a dance move over and over.” He demonstrates a pivot-twist-arm thing. It’s simple but so smooth that if you put a gun to my head and told me to replicate it or die, I’d have to tell my mother I loved her as I waited for the inevitable.
“How about you?”
“I had your talisman in my pocket,” he says. “It steadied me.”
Jihoon flops down to lie on the stage, and I break away to walk around, noting the dusty marks of their feet all over. How does he manage to do that much dancing and singing without passing out? I couldn’t walk downstairs for two days after Hana made me go to a booty blaster class. I drift back to sit beside him, only giving a quick thought to the integrity of my white pants.
“You were actually singing?” I ask. “No lip-synching?”
He sits up and gives me a sour look. “Ari, really. I’m a professional.”
“You were dancing. Like, hard. With jumps.” My voice bounces like a ball if I walk too fast.
“It’s a performance. Our fans wouldn’t be happy if we stood in one spot like statues for three hours.”
“It must be hard to keep it up.”
“I have excellent stamina.” His delivery is so straight that at first I don’t see the smirk on his face. Then I burst out laughing.
“Don’t be nasty.”
“Fine, but it’s true.”
He pulls out a tube of lip gloss and runs it over his mouth in a far sexier way than I thought even possible.
“What are you doing?” I croak.
“My lips are dry. You want some? It’s pomegranate.” He holds it out to me.
“No, I mean you’re a pop star. You put on lip gloss.” It’s weirding me out to see Jihoon do regular Jihoon things when an hour ago he was on this very stage making his fans scream their brains out.
Jihoon laughs so hard, he drops the tube, and since I’ve already sacrificed my white pants to the stage dust, I roll over after it. When I hand it back, he grabs my hand. “It’s only me,” he says. “I sing. I get dry lips. You do law. You get dry lips. Same thing.”
This is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start. Instead I say, “My lips are perfectly hydrated.”
Jihoon’s eyes drop down, and he licks his freshly pomegranated mouth. “Really? I should check.”
He leans in, but I’m distracted again. This time it’s the silver hoops in his ears. “Are those?”
Jihoon touches one with gentle fingers. “The ones you bought me. I wanted you with me onstage.”
Worry floats away as Jihoon’s hand snakes around my waist to pull me in tight against him, and he bites softly on my lower lip. I can almost taste my pulse as it surges.
Then he pulls back, finger tracing my eyebrow. “Do you want to go home?”
“Toronto home or your apartment home?” I ask.
“Toronto eventually. Apartment first.”
I nod and his face breaks open in a huge smile. “Let’s go.”