Chapter 1 - Three Knocks
The third week of August the conference room on the eighth floor of Reyes Entertainment held the whole group. Printed comeback schedules sat in front of every member. Jin had his tablet open to the production timeline. Luly stood at the whiteboard with a marker.
“Recording starts September 8th,” Luly said. “Everything needs to be locked before then. Jisung, your two contributions are close. Joon, your third track needs a bridge.”
“I know,” Joon said.
“I’m not asking if you know. I’m asking when.”
“End of this week,” he said.
She marked something on the board.
Dongmin was eating from a bag of chips he had materialized from somewhere. Taeyul was reviewing his individual schedule breakdown. Minjae had a pen in hand, reading every line the way he read everything, like it was a contract. Haesoo had his notebook open beside the printed schedule. Eunwoo was listening. Jisung was watching the whiteboard.
Jin stood near the window with his arms crossed, going through the production budget on his tablet.
Then came the knock.
Three knocks. Even. Not tentative, not aggressive. Just present.
“Come in,” Luly said without turning from the board.
The door opened.
She was wearing a pink fitted tee, light wash jeans, white sneakers. Her hair was down, jet-black waves falling past her chest almost to her waist. Brown eyes that moved across the room once, one full sweep, before she stopped in the doorway.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Lou Mar.”
The room shifted in different ways.
Dongmin stopped chewing. Eunwoo sat slightly straighter. Taeyul lowered his schedule printout by about two inches. Minjae looked up from his papers. Jisung’s pen stopped moving.
Joon looked at Jin.
Jin was staring.
Not subtly. Not the quick professional assessment he gave everything. Actually staring.
Joon kicked him under the table.
“Blink,” Joon said flatly.
Jin blinked. His expression reset immediately into the composed neutral he wore in every meeting and he straightened against the window like nothing had happened.
Lou had clocked all of it. Her eyes moved to Jin once, brief and even and unreadable, and then completed their sweep of the room without comment.
Luly turned from the whiteboard.
She looked at the girl in the doorway. At the pink tee. The jeans. The hair. The face.
“And who are you,” she said.
Not unfriendly. Just the question, placed cleanly, waiting.
“I work for HQ,” Lou said. “They told me to come introduce myself. They said your artists already know about the organization so I didn’t need to be careful about what I said in front of them.”
Luly set the marker on the whiteboard ledge.
“Why did they send you here specifically,” she said.
“To introduce myself,” Lou said. “Apparently there’s a protocol when a new operative is stationed in the same city as an existing allied structure. I’m told it prevents complications.”
“What kind of complications,” Jin said.
His voice was even. Professional. Nobody who hadn’t been in the room thirty seconds ago would have known anything.
Lou looked at him.
“The kind where two operatives with overlapping territory run into each other mid-mission and don’t know whose operation they’re stepping on,” she said. “And something gets destroyed that didn’t need to be destroyed.”
Jin nodded once.
Luly was still looking at her.
“What level are you,” she said.
“Level ten,” Lou said.
The room changed again.
Dongmin looked at Minjae. Minjae looked at Luly. Taeyul looked at Lou with the focused attention he gave things that didn’t fit his existing categories.
“That’s not possible,” Jin said. Not accusatory. Just factual. “Luly is the only level ten.”
“I was reclassified last week,” Lou said. “I’m aware there’s only been one before. They seemed very pleased about it. I found the ceremony a little excessive.”
“There was a ceremony,” Luly said.
“A lot of people standing up very straight,” Lou said. “Someone gave a speech. I kept waiting for it to be over.”
Joon was watching Lou with the flat assessing expression he gave people he was still deciding something about.
Haesoo was watching Luly. She was doing the thing she did when she was calculating. Composure fully in place, eyes doing extra work underneath it.
“How old are you,” Luly said.
“Seventeen,” Lou said.
“You’re seventeen,” Luly said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re level ten.”
“Since last week,” Lou said. “I know. It’s fast.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Dongmin opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” Minjae said, without looking at him.
Dongmin closed his mouth.
“Anyway,” Lou said. She looked at the room one more time, that same complete unhurried sweep. “I did what they asked. You know I exist, I know you exist, we don’t accidentally step on each other’s work.” She looked at Luly directly. “I hope that’s satisfactory.”
“It’s noted,” Luly said.
Lou nodded once.
She turned around and walked out.
The door closed.
The conference room was quiet.
Then Dongmin turned to the table.
“She’s seventeen,” Dongmin said.
“Level ten,” Taeyul said, almost to himself.
“Both things,” Eunwoo said. “Both things at the same time.”
Joon turned slowly and looked at Jin.
Jin had his arms crossed again. His eyes were on his tablet.
“Jin,” Joon said.
“The production timeline,” Jin said. “We were on September 8th.”
Joon stared at him for two full seconds.
“Right,” Joon said.
He looked back at his papers.
Minjae looked at Luly.
She had picked up her marker and turned back to the whiteboard. Her back was to the room. Her hand was moving. Completely steady.
Minjae looked at the closed door.
He looked at Jin.
Jin was reading his tablet.
Minjae looked back at his own papers.
Dongmin leaned toward Eunwoo.
“Jin was staring,” Dongmin whispered.
“I know,” Eunwoo whispered back.
“Like actually staring,” Dongmin said.
“Dongmin,” Luly said from the whiteboard.
“I’m listening,” Dongmin said immediately.
“Then listen,” she said.
She kept writing.
Lou walked out of the Reyes Entertainment building and back into Gangnam like she had walked out of every room her whole life. Clean. No looking back.
The afternoon was warm and loud and she had been in Seoul for exactly one day.
Fresno had been quieter. Flatter. The kind of city that stayed where you put it. She had lived there her whole life in a small house with beige walls and a yard that needed mowing and a neighborhood where people waved when they drove past but nobody really talked. That had suited her fine. She had learned young that people were mostly noise and noise was mostly waste and if you were quiet enough long enough you could learn everything about a person without them learning anything about you.
HQ had pulled her out of Fresno on a Tuesday with two days notice.
Seoul by Wednesday.
She was still jet lagged. Her body kept insisting it was three in the morning.
She walked down the Gangnam sidewalk with her hands in her pockets and let the city move around her. It was nothing like Fresno. The density of it, the way sound layered, the smell of food coming from everywhere at once, people walking fast and close without apology. Her Stellar Sight was doing what it always did in unfamiliar environments, mapping trajectories, reading heat signatures, filing movement patterns of everyone around her before she consciously asked it to.
She turned it down the way you turned down music that was too loud.
She had been level seven since she was twelve. Five years of level seven. She had passed the HQ test at twelve the same way she did most things, quietly, without announcing it was coming, and they had looked at her results and looked at her and looked at her results again. Level seven had been clean and manageable. It came with a very specific set of expectations she had learned to meet without drama. Nobody came to your apartment with speeches at level seven. Nobody stood up very straight and gave eleven minute addresses about legacy and classification history.
She had stood in that room at HQ eight days ago and listened to Director Andrews talk and thought about the drive back to Fresno and whether she had left her window unlocked.
And then they had said Seoul.
She stopped at a crosswalk.
The light was red. People accumulated around her pressing toward the curb the way Seoul pedestrians did, like the walk signal was already a formality they had moved past.
She stayed where she was.
She thought about the meeting she had just walked out of. The conference room. Seven boys in various states of listening and one woman at a whiteboard who had looked at her the way Lou looked at things she had not decided about yet.
And the man near the window.
She filed that away without looking at it.
The light changed. She moved.
She needed to find food. She needed to locate the nearest grocery store. She needed to call HQ and confirm her handler assignment and request a secure line for Korea-side briefings.
She had done none of those things.
She had a hotel room in Gangnam that smelled like new carpet and a suitcase she had not fully unpacked and a phone full of orientation documents she had not fully read.
She passed a convenience store and stopped.
She went in.
The blast of air conditioning hit her shoulders. Fluorescent light. Clean aisles. A cashier behind the counter staring at his phone.
She stood in the drink aisle and looked at the options. Everything was in Korean she could not yet fully read. She started translating slowly, cross-referencing what she remembered from the language module HQ had made her complete on the flight over.
Strawberry milk. She recognized that one.
She took it.
She paid. The cashier said something she mostly understood. She nodded and took her change and walked back out into the afternoon.
She stood on the sidewalk and drank the strawberry milk and looked at the street.
Twenty four hours in Seoul.
She had introduced herself to one allied structure, been stared at by a man in a suit, and bought a drink.
She finished the milk. She threw the carton in the bin near the door. She put her hands back in her pockets.
She started walking.
Finding a house in Seoul had taken her two weeks of remote searching from Fresno and she still wasn’t sure she had gotten it right.
Everyone lived in apartments. That was the first thing she learned. Apartments stacked on apartments, buildings so close together that if your neighbor was awake at two in the morning you knew about it. She had made the mistake of looking at apartments first the way the HQ relocation coordinator had suggested and spent three days reading listings before she accepted that it wasn’t going to work. An apartment meant a hallway. A hallway meant neighbors. Neighbors meant someone eventually seeing her leave at midnight in gear with a sidearm seated at her hip and asking questions she could not answer without making someone’s life complicated.
She had found the house on the fourth day of looking.
It was small by any standard that wasn’t a Seoul apartment. It had a gate. It had a path. It had a keypad. Those three things had been enough.
She turned onto her street now and walked toward it. Gangnam was still moving behind her, loud and dense, and she felt the city thin slightly as she came down the quieter block. She had noticed that about Seoul. The noise never fully stopped but it had gradients. You could find the edges of it if you looked.
She had also noticed the trash bags.
Lined up on the sidewalks in colored sacks, waiting for collection, the smell of them mixing with the exhaust and the food vendors and the particular city heat of late August. Fresno had its own problems but the air there was different. Open. She had not expected Seoul to press against her the way it did, all density and sound and smell. Her Stellar Sight picked up everything. She was getting better at filtering it but it still took work.
She reached the gate.
She entered the code. It clicked open. She walked down the path to the door and entered that code too and stepped inside.
Shoes off at the entrance. She had gotten used to that quickly. It made sense to her in a way a lot of things in Seoul made sense, the logic underneath the habit running clean once you understood it.
The house opened up past the entryway into the living room, simple and light, connected to the kitchen without a wall between them. She had not done much to it yet. A couch. A table. The kitchen had what she needed and nothing extra. She had not been here long enough to accumulate anything.
The smell hit her the way it always hit her when she came home.
Candy.
She had unpacked her candles before she unpacked her clothes. Three of them on the kitchen counter, two in the bedroom, one on the bathroom shelf. She had been buying candy-scented candles and perfumes since she was old enough to have her own money and she had never fully been able to explain it beyond the fact that it made a room feel less like a room she was just passing through.
She walked to the bedroom.
It was the most finished space in the house because it was the one that mattered. King bed against the wall, two nightstands, a vanity she actually used, a walk-in closet with her clothes organized in the specific way she had organized them since she was twelve, a bathroom off the back. The other room had become her office within the first hour of moving in. Equipment set up before furniture. That order had always felt correct to her.
She went to the bookcase beside the closet door.
She scanned the spines. She had shipped fourteen books from Fresno. They were the only things she had insisted on shipping herself rather than replacing. Everything else she had been fine leaving behind or buying new. The books she had carried.
She pulled one from the shelf.
She took off her jeans and her tee and changed into the oversized shirt she slept in. She got into bed. She pulled the blanket up to her waist. She opened the book.
Outside through the window the Seoul afternoon was winding toward evening, loud and continuous and entirely indifferent to the girl in the house who had been in the country for one day and had no one to call and preferred it that way.
She read.
September 5th started well enough.
Lou had done her research. There was a phone store three blocks from her house, one of the big carrier ones with the wide glass front and the displays in the window. She wanted a phone that was hers.
She pushed through the door.
A worker in a navy uniform appeared almost immediately.
“Welcome. How can I help you today?”
“I want to buy a phone,” Lou said. “A personal one.”
“Of course.” He gestured toward the display wall. “Did you have a model in mind?”
She looked at the wall. She pointed at one.
“That one,” she said.
“Good choice.” He pulled out a tablet and started entering information. “Can I see your ID?”
She gave it to him.
He looked at it. He looked at her. He looked at it again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His tone was genuinely apologetic. “You have to be eighteen to sign a carrier contract.”
Lou looked at him.
“I’m almost eighteen,” she said.
“I understand. I’m very sorry. It’s the regulation.”
“When does the regulation start. Is it the day of the birthday or the day after.”
He blinked.
“The day of,” he said. “Once you turn eighteen you can come back and we’ll take care of everything.”
“My birthday is September 27th,” she said.
“Then September 27th we will be here,” he said, and he genuinely seemed to mean it.
Lou looked at the phone on the display wall for a moment.
“Okay,” she said.
She walked out.
She stood on the sidewalk.
Twenty two more days.
She started walking and after a few blocks her stomach said what it had been saying since morning and she had been ignoring. She needed to eat. She had been surviving on convenience store food and the remnants of what she had brought from Fresno and neither of those things were going to hold.
She found a restaurant by the smell of it. A small place, tables visible through the window. She stood outside looking at the menu board for a moment.
She went in.
The hostess smiled. “Just one?”
“Just one,” Lou said.
She was sat at a small table by the wall. A menu appeared. She opened it and looked through it and pointed at something that sounded like it would taste good.
The server nodded and left.
The food arrived. She looked at it. It smelled fine. She picked up her chopsticks and took a bite.
She put the chopsticks down.
She looked at the bowl.
She picked them back up and took another bite to make sure she had not imagined it.
She had not imagined it.
It was not good. Not bad in any way she could specifically name. It was just deeply, thoroughly wrong for her. The flavor sat on her tongue like a decision she had already regretted.
She looked at the tables around her. Every other person eating looked completely satisfied. A man to her left was eating the same dish and looked like it was the best thing that had happened to him today.
She picked up her chopsticks again.
She ate it fast.
She did not think about the taste. She focused on the wall across from her and ate the entire bowl in a methodical series of bites that had nothing to do with enjoyment and everything to do with the fact that her body needed calories and leaving food was not something she was willing to do.
The server came by.
“How was everything?”
“Good,” Lou said. “Thank you.”
She paid and left.
Outside she stood on the sidewalk and breathed through her mouth for a moment.
She found the convenience store two blocks down. She went straight to the drink aisle and took two strawberry milks. She paid and went back outside.
She opened the first one and drank it standing on the sidewalk.
The strawberry hit her tongue and she closed her eyes for exactly two seconds.
Better.
She finished the second one before she reached the corner. She looked around for a trash can. That was the other thing about Seoul. Trash cans were a rumor. In Fresno there was a bin on every corner and she had never once thought about where to throw something away. Here she had learned fast to hold onto things until she found a store with a can outside or carry them back to the house.
She walked back to the convenience store and threw both cartons away.
She started walking home.
The afternoon was still warm and the streets were still loud and her stomach had stopped complaining. She turned onto her block. She entered her gate code and walked down the path and entered her door code and stepped inside.
Shoes off.
The house smelled like candy.
She went to the kitchen and put the kettle on and stood there while it heated and thought about nothing in particular and everything at once the way she always did when she was alone.
Which was always.
Which was fine.
She had come back the night before somewhere past midnight and gone straight to the shower and then straight to bed and slept the heavy boneless sleep of someone whose body had decided the conversation was over.
She woke up in the late afternoon.
The house was quiet around her. The candles had burned low while she was gone and the candy smell had faded to something faint and familiar underneath. She lay in bed for a moment looking at the ceiling and let her body report in. Nothing broken. Some soreness across her left shoulder from a landing that had not gone the way she planned. Nothing that wouldn’t resolve in a few days.
She got up and showered. The water ran hot and she stood under it for a long time.
She changed into a tshirt and shorts and went to the kitchen and ate something small standing at the counter because she was hungry but not hungry enough to cook. She ate looking out the window at the September afternoon. The street was quiet. The light was the particular gold of early evening, warm and slightly long, the kind that only happened for a few weeks at the end of summer before the season turned over completely.
She went to her bookcase.
She ran her finger along the spines and pulled out the one she had been in the middle of before the mission had interrupted her. She found her page. She went to the couch.
She sat with her legs tucked under her and opened the book and read.
The house settled around her. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere down the street a car passed. The gold light outside moved slowly across the floor as the sun dropped.
She read three chapters without stopping.
She did not think about the date.
She had not thought about the date in years. There was no one to think about it with her and so it had become a day like any other day, just a number cycling over on a calendar, September 27th arriving and departing the same way September 26th did and September 28th would.
She turned a page.
She was eighteen years old and she was alone on her couch in Seoul reading a book and the city outside her window was loud and indifferent and the candle on the kitchen counter had gone completely out.
She did not notice any of it.
She kept reading.
She was four chapters in when the doorbell rang.
She looked up.
She had been in Seoul for thirty four days and the doorbell had not rung once. The gate code was hers. The HQ relocation coordinator had hers. The cleaning company that came biweekly had hers. Nobody used the bell.
She closed the book over her finger.
She got up.
She walked to the door and looked at the small monitor beside it.
The man from the meeting.
She had not gotten his name. She had registered him the way she had registered everyone else in that room, the tall one near the window who had been staring at her until the rapper kicked him to make him blink. That was what she had filed him under. Tall man, conference room, stared.
She looked at the monitor for a moment.
She opened the door.
He was standing on her step holding a white box. Suit pants. A black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. The shoulders that took up more of the doorway than was strictly necessary. He looked exactly the way he had looked in the conference room a month ago.
She had to look up to meet his eyes. He was significantly tall. She had clocked that the first time and was clocking it again now.
He held up the box slightly.
“I looked up where you live in the HQ system,” he said. “It said it was your birthday today.”
She looked at the box.
“I brought you a cake,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I don’t like cake,” she said.
“Just a slice,” he said. “I already brought it.”
He was already taking off his shoes at her entrance.
She watched him do it. He lined them up against the wall, neat, the way Koreans did it without thinking. She stepped back from the door without deciding to and he came in.
She closed the door behind him.
He walked to her table and set the box down. He looked around the living room once. Not assessing. Just taking it in.
“Plates,” she said.
She went to the kitchen and pulled two plates from the cabinet. Two forks. She brought them back. He had opened the box and was setting the cake out on the table. Small. White frosting. Strawberries on top.
She sat down across from him.
He pulled a single candle out of his pocket along with a lighter.
She looked at the candle.
“You brought a candle,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“And a lighter.”
“Yes,” he said.
He stuck the candle in the center of the cake. He lit it.
He looked at her across the table.
He sang happy birthday.
His voice was low and even and not particularly performed and she did not know what to do with her face during it so she looked at the candle and let him finish.
He finished.
She blew the candle out.
He pulled it out of the cake and set it on the edge of the box. He cut a slice for her and put it on her plate. He cut a slice for himself.
She picked up her fork.
She ate a small bite.
She chewed slowly.
She did not love it. But it was sweeter than the food she had eaten earlier in the week and that was something.
She ate it because he had brought it.
He ate his slice steadily without commentary. He looked around the room once while he was eating.
“It smells very sweet in here,” he said.
“I like it smelling like candy,” she said.
He nodded.
“I noticed in the meeting,” he said. “When you came in. There was a faint smell.”
“From my perfume,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
She looked at him.
He kept eating.
She ate slowly. He finished his slice first. He set his fork down.
She finished hers.
“Take it home,” she said. She gestured at the rest of the cake. “I won’t eat it.”
He looked at the box.
“Okay,” he said.
He closed the box.
She watched him.
“Do you buy cake for all agents,” she said.
He looked at her.
“No,” he said.
She held his gaze.
“Noted,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment longer.
Then he stood up.
He picked up the box.
She stood up too.
He walked to the entrance and put his shoes back on. The same neat way he had taken them off. He picked up the box again.
He looked at her.
“Happy birthday Lou,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
He opened the door.
He walked out.
The door closed behind him.
She stood in the entrance of her house.
She looked at the two plates on the table. The two forks. The candle on the edge of where the box had been.
She walked over.
She picked up the candle.
She looked at it.
She put it on the kitchen counter beside the candles she had not lit yet today.
She went back to the couch.
She picked up her book.
She found her page.
She read.
Jin walked into the rehearsal studio carrying the white box.
Rehearsals were mid-run. Choreography on pause. Water flasks scattered across the floor. Luly was sitting cross legged near the mirror with her laptop in her lap reviewing something. Minjae and Eunwoo were stretching against the wall. Haesoo was at the piano running through chords. Dongmin was lying on his back on the floor. Taeyul was reviewing footage on his phone. Joon was at the corner of the room writing in his notebook. Jisung was watching the mirror.
Jin set the cake box on the table near the door.
Haesoo looked up from the piano.
He saw the box.
He saw Jin.
He looked at Luly.
He looked back at Jin.
“You brought Luly a cake for her birthday?” Haesoo said.
Luly looked up from her laptop.
Jin had walked to the table and was already opening the box.
“It’s not for Luly,” Jin said.
The room looked at him.
Haesoo went still.
Luly’s expression did not change.
“I took it to Lou,” Jin said. “She said she didn’t like cake. She ate a slice to be polite and told me to take the rest.”
Dongmin was already on his feet. He had moved across the studio with the specific speed he reserved for food and he was opening the box the rest of the way before Jin had finished his sentence.
“It has strawberries on it,” Dongmin said.
“I am aware,” Jin said.
Dongmin pulled the cake out of the box.
The studio went very quiet in a specific way.
Luly closed her laptop.
She looked at Jin.
“You bought a stranger a cake,” she said.
Her voice was even. Completely even. The way it was when she had already processed something and was simply requesting the information be confirmed.
Jin was looking at the table.
“She’s not a stranger,” Jin said. “I’ve met her.”
“You met her once,” Luly said. “For four minutes. In a meeting.”
“That’s still meeting her,” Jin said.
Joon set his notebook down.
He had not looked up at any point in the conversation. He turned a page slowly.
“He bought his crush a cake,” Joon said.
The studio went silent in a new way.
Dongmin had a piece of strawberry in his hand. He stopped mid bite. He looked at Joon. He looked at Jin. He looked back at Joon.
“His crush,” Dongmin said.
“That’s what I said,” Joon said.
“Hyung has a crush,” Dongmin said. He was looking at Jin like he was trying to fit a new piece of information into a category his brain did not have a folder for yet. “Jin hyung. A crush.”
“Dongmin,” Jin said.
“On a girl,” Dongmin said. “An actual girl.”
“He has had crushes before,” Eunwoo said gently.
“Has he,” Dongmin said. He looked at Eunwoo. “Have you ever seen one.”
Eunwoo opened his mouth.
He closed it.
“I have not,” Eunwoo said.
“Right,” Dongmin said.
Taeyul had set his phone down completely. He was watching Jin with the focused attention he gave things that were rearranging his existing categories.
“Did he stare at her in the meeting,” Taeyul said. To Joon.
“Yes,” Joon said.
“I remember now,” Taeyul said. “You kicked him to make him blink.”
“I did,” Joon said.
“I assumed it was because she said she was level ten,” Taeyul said.
“It was not because she said she was level ten,” Joon said.
Jisung was looking at Jin from the mirror. He had not said anything but he had the specific stillness he had when he was watching something develop he had already known about for longer than anyone else.
“Joon,” Jin said.
“Am I wrong,” Joon said.
Jin did not answer.
“He’s not wrong,” Eunwoo said quietly. Almost apologetic.
“Eunwoo,” Jin said.
“I’m sorry hyung,” Eunwoo said. “But you went to a bakery.”
“You sang to her,” Joon said.
“You sang to her,” Dongmin said. Loud. The realization hitting him fresh.
“I did not say that,” Jin said.
“You implied it,” Joon said.
“I implied nothing,” Jin said.
“You put a candle on the cake,” Joon said. “What did you do, set it on her table and walk away.”
Jin looked at the box on the table.
“I sang the song,” he said.
The studio reacted.
Dongmin made a sound that was not a word. Taeyul pressed his hand flat over his mouth. Eunwoo looked at Minjae. Minjae was watching Jin with the quiet attention he gave things he was going to need to think about later. Jisung had not moved from the mirror but his expression had shifted by a degree.
“Jin hyung sang happy birthday to a girl,” Dongmin said.
“To a stranger,” Joon said.
“To his crush,” Dongmin said.
“Dongmin,” Jin said.
“Am I wrong,” Dongmin said.
“You’re not,” Joon said.
Haesoo had not said anything. He was looking at Luly.
Her face had not changed. But her hand had stopped moving over the closed laptop. Her fingers were flat against the lid.
“Where did you get the cake,” Eunwoo said. He was trying to redirect. Eunwoo redirected the way Eunwoo did everything, gently, without making it look like that was what he was doing.
“A bakery,” Jin said.
“Which one,” Dongmin said.
“Why does that matter,” Jin said.
“It matters because there are two cake bakeries near the company and one of them is significantly nicer than the other and I want to know which one you went to,” Dongmin said.
Jin looked at the ceiling for a brief moment.
“The nicer one,” he said.
The studio shifted again.
“He went to the nicer bakery,” Taeyul said.
“For his crush,” Dongmin said.
“On a Saturday,” Joon said.
“On her birthday,” Eunwoo said quietly.
Luly was looking at Jin.
He was not looking at her.
“Jin,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“You went to the nicer bakery.”
“Yes.”
“On her birthday.”
“Yes.”
“Which is also my birthday.”
The studio went completely silent.
Jin looked at the table.
He did not say anything.
Haesoo looked at Luly.
Luly was looking at Jin.
She was completely composed.
That was somehow worse than if she had not been.
“Jin,” she said.
“Luly,” he said.
“You forgot,” she said. Flat. Clean. The voice she used for things she had already accepted before the conversation arrived.
“I didn’t forget,” Jin said.
“You forgot.”
“I have your gift at home,” Jin said. “I was bringing it tonight after rehearsal. I always bring it at night. You know that.”
Luly looked at him.
“You always bring it at night,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Because that’s when we celebrate,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
She held his gaze.
“And you spent the afternoon bringing a stranger a cake,” she said.
“Luly,” he said.
“On our birthday,” she said.
The studio was not moving.
Dongmin had set the strawberry down.
Haesoo was looking at the floor.
Jisung was watching Luly.
Luly opened her laptop.
“Okay,” she said.
She looked at the screen.
She was not actually reading.
Jin was still standing at the table.
“Luly,” he said.
“I’m working,” she said.
“Luly.”
“I said I’m working, Jin.”
The studio held that.
Minjae looked at Jin.
Jin looked at Luly’s back.
He stood there for a moment.
Then he picked up his tablet from the side table and moved to the corner he usually stood in during rehearsals.
Dongmin looked at the cake.
He closed the box.
He set it on the table without finishing his slice.
He sat back down on the floor.
The studio was quiet.
“Should we run it again,” Minjae said carefully.
“Yes,” Luly said without looking up from her laptop.
They got into position.
The music started.
Luly was still looking at her screen.
She was not reading.
September 28th was bright and Lou was eighteen years old and the first thing she did was go get her phone.
She showered. She changed into a black t shirt, jean shorts, her white sneakers. She picked the candy scented perfume off her vanity and sprayed it once. Soft. Not intoxicating. The way she liked it.
She grabbed her HQ phone, her wallet, and the book she was reading and stuffed all of it into her purse.
She walked to the phone store.
The same worker in the navy uniform from twenty two days ago looked up when she walked in. He recognized her immediately. His face did the thing faces did when someone remembered something pleasant.
“You came back,” he said.
“You said I could,” Lou said.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
“Yesterday,” Lou said.
“Then happy day after,” he said.
He pulled out the tablet.
The whole transaction took thirty five minutes. She signed everything. She picked the model she had pointed at three weeks ago. She picked a pink case with a small teddy bear printed in the center because it had been sitting in the display next to the phone she chose and she had liked it immediately and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
The worker boxed it for her. She paid. She thanked him.
She walked outside.
She stood on the sidewalk. She opened the box. She put the phone in the case. She slid the phone and the charger into her purse. She walked over to a trash can outside the store and threw the box away.
She opened her book.
She started walking down Gangnam reading.
She was good at reading and walking. She had done it her whole life. Her Stellar Sight kept track of trajectories around her without conscious effort, mapping the movement of every person on the sidewalk into her peripheral awareness so her eyes could stay on the page. She had never collided with anyone reading and walking. Not once.
She had read about half a page when something solid stopped her.
She walked directly into a chest.
A high chest. Higher than chests usually were.
She looked up.
The man from the meeting.
She blinked.
She looked at him.
“You’re tall,” she said.
He looked down at her.
“Hello to you too,” he said.
She closed her book over her finger.
“Has anyone told you you’re tall,” she said.
“Many times,” he said.
“I am tall too,” she said.
He laughed.
A short one. Quiet. The kind that came out before he could stop it.
She looked at him.
“I am not joking,” she said.
“You’re not tall,” he said.
“How tall are you,” she said.
“One ninety five.”
“You’re a skyscraper,” she said.
The corner of his mouth moved.
“I am one sixty five,” she said.
“You’re like thirty centimeters shorter than me,” he said.
“Some of us aren’t skyscrapers,” she said. She looked up at him. The sun was directly behind his shoulder and she had to squint slightly. Then she stopped squinting. “But you’re good at blocking the sun.”
He looked at her.
“Keep walking,” she said.
He looked at her for one more second.
Then he started walking.
She fell into step behind him.
She opened her book again.
He glanced back over his shoulder.
She was reading. Walking. Using him as a moving shadow.
He turned his head forward and kept going.
She read for half a block.
“Slow down,” she said from behind him.
He slowed down.
“Better,” she said.
He kept walking at the new pace.
“Where are you going,” she said. She had not looked up from her book.
“I had a meeting near here,” he said.
“How did your meeting go.”
“It was fine.”
“Fine,” she said. She turned a page. “That’s not an answer.”
“It was fine,” he said again.
She read another paragraph.
“You walk into me,” she said. “And now you’re walking me down Gangnam.”
“You’re walking me down Gangnam,” he said. “I was going this direction.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s the direction I was already going,” he said.
She turned a page.
“You ran into me,” she said.
He looked over his shoulder again.
“I did not run into you,” he said.
“You did,” she said. “You came down the street and ran straight into me.”
“You were reading a book while walking,” he said.
“I’m good at reading while walking,” she said. “I have not run into a single person in my entire life. You ran into me.”
He turned forward.
He did not argue.
She read another half page.
They reached a corner.
“Are you turning here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I will keep going straight.”
“Okay.”
He stopped at the corner.
She stopped behind him.
He turned around and looked down at her.
She closed her book.
She looked up.
“You’re still very tall,” she said.
“You mentioned that,” he said.
“Just confirming.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“Bye Lou,” he said.
“Bye Skyscraper,” she said.
She walked across the intersection.
She opened her book again as she went.
He stood at the corner.
He watched her walk away reading.
His hand was still in his pocket holding his phone.
He had not actually had a meeting nearby.
He stood there for a moment longer.
Then he turned and walked the other direction.
Jin came through the lobby of Reyes Entertainment and into the elevator and up to the eighth floor like he did every day.
He walked into the rehearsal studio.
Rehearsals were already running. Music going. The members in formation.
Jin set his tablet down on the side table and walked to his usual corner.
Joon paused mid run.
Everyone else kept moving for a second before they noticed Joon had stopped. The formation broke unevenly. Dongmin almost walked into Eunwoo. Minjae held up his hand and the music cut.
The studio looked at Joon.
Joon was looking at Jin.
“Someone looks extra happy today,” Joon said.
Dongmin turned to look at Jin.
“Jin always has the same face,” Dongmin said.
“No,” Joon said. “He looks different today.”
The studio looked at Jin.
Jin was unlocking his tablet.
“I look the same,” he said without looking up.
“You don’t,” Joon said.
“I do,” Jin said.
“What’s different about his face,” Dongmin said. To Joon. Studying Jin’s face from across the studio. “Show me what you’re seeing.”
“His mouth,” Joon said.
“What about his mouth,” Dongmin said.
“The corner of it.”
Dongmin squinted at Jin.
“It’s not doing anything,” Dongmin said.
“That’s what’s different,” Joon said. “It’s almost doing something.”
“It’s not doing anything,” Jin said.
“It’s almost doing something,” Joon said again.
Taeyul had walked over to the mirror to fix his hair and was now looking at Jin’s reflection. He was a good reader of faces. He had built his whole trainee career on reading faces. He looked at Jin the way Taeyul looked at faces when he was actually trying to read them.
“He saw her,” Taeyul said.
The studio looked at Taeyul.
Joon turned his head slowly.
“He saw her,” Joon said.
“Hyung saw her,” Dongmin said.
“Did you see her,” Eunwoo said.
Jin was reading his tablet.
“I was at a meeting,” Jin said.
“Where was your meeting,” Joon said.
“Near Gangnam station.”
“Where exactly,” Joon said.
“It doesn’t matter where exactly,” Jin said.
“It does,” Joon said.
“Where does she live,” Dongmin said.
“That’s classified,” Jin said.
“In what way is that classified,” Dongmin said.
“It’s HQ housing,” Jin said. “It’s in the system.”
“Which is in Gangnam,” Joon said.
Jin did not respond.
Joon looked at Dongmin.
Dongmin looked at Joon.
“He saw her,” Dongmin said again.
Taeyul was still watching Jin’s reflection.
“He didn’t just see her,” Taeyul said. “He talked to her.”
The studio looked at Taeyul.
“How do you know that,” Eunwoo said.
“Because the meeting at Gangnam station story is a cover,” Taeyul said. “He didn’t have a meeting. He was looking for her.”
“I had a meeting,” Jin said.
“With who,” Taeyul said.
Jin did not answer.
“With who Jin,” Joon said.
“It was administrative,” Jin said.
“Administrative,” Dongmin said.
“Yes,” Jin said.
“With who,” Joon said again.
Jin set his tablet down.
“I’m not having this conversation,” he said.
“He’s not having this conversation,” Joon said. “Because he ran into her.”
“He ran into her,” Dongmin said. “I knew it.”
“You didn’t know it,” Taeyul said.
“I figured it out as he was saying it,” Dongmin said.
“He told you nothing,” Taeyul said.
“His face is telling me everything,” Dongmin said.
Jin was looking at the ceiling now.
Jisung was watching from the mirror.
He had not said anything. He had been watching Jin since Jin came through the door.
“It’s the eyes,” Jisung said quietly.
The studio looked at Jisung.
Joon looked back at Jin.
“It’s the eyes,” Joon said.
“It’s not the eyes,” Jin said.
“It’s the eyes,” Jisung said again. Softer. Like he was confirming it to himself.
Minjae had been standing in the center of the floor watching all of this without saying anything. He was reading the room the way he always read it.
“Are we running it again,” Minjae said.
Nobody answered him.
“Are we running it again,” Minjae said.
“In a minute,” Joon said. He was still looking at Jin.
“Joon,” Minjae said.
“In a minute hyung,” Joon said. “I’m working.”
“You’re not working,” Minjae said.
“I’m gathering information,” Joon said.
“That’s not what we’re here to do,” Minjae said.
Joon looked at Jin one more time.
He turned back to the floor.
“Fine,” Joon said. “Let’s run it.”
The members got back into position.
Jin picked up his tablet again.
He looked at his screen.
The corner of his mouth was almost doing something.
He pulled it flat.
Joon was watching him in the mirror.
He saw it.
He did not say anything.
The music started.
