The Pitch
JIHOON
The first time I saw the video, I was still in my stage clothes.
Sweat-damp collar, mic pack still clipped to my waistband, three encores deep into the best show of the tour — and then my manager's face on the other side of the greenroom door, and I knew before he said anything.
"It's everywhere," Sungmin said. He didn't even say hello. "Twenty minutes. Maybe less before it's international."
He turned his phone around.
The clip was eleven seconds long. Grainy, shot from an angle that made it look worse than it was — my hand on Areum's waist backstage at the awards show three weeks ago, her head tilted up toward mine, both of us laughing at something I couldn't even remember anymore. Eleven seconds, no audio, and a caption that had already decided what it meant.
Areum is married. People didn't need audio for that part.
"It's not what it looks like," I said, which is what everyone says, which is exactly why nobody was going to believe me.
"Doesn't matter what it is." Sungmin was already typing, already in crisis mode, already three steps ahead of me the way he always was. "It matters what it looks like for the next six news cycles. Get changed. We're doing damage control tonight, not tomorrow."
I didn't tell him the truth. I hadn't told anyone the truth — that Areum had been crying about her husband, that I was steadying her, that the real story was messier and sadder and not mine to hand over to a headline just to save myself. Some things you protect even when protecting them costs you.
By the time I got back to the hotel, my name was trending in four languages.
MEI LIN
I got the call at 2 a.m., which should have told me everything.
Nobody schedules a good meeting at 2 a.m. Sungmin's assistant used the word "urgent" twice in a four-second voicemail, which in industry-speak means someone's career is on fire and we need a fire extinguisher who won't ask too many questions.
I almost didn't go. I had a real reason not to — an actual, signed, non-negotiable reason involving a clause in my contract I'd been trying not to think about for two months. But "almost" isn't "didn't," and that's the whole problem with me and this industry. I keep showing up to rooms I know better than to walk into.
The conference room at 9 a.m. had too much natural light for the conversation we were about to have. Sungmin sat at the head of the table like a man who hadn't slept, which, judging by his collar, he hadn't. And across from me —
Jiho.
Not Jihoon. Jiho, the version of him that existed for people like me, people who weren't actually in his life — hair still styled from a show twelve hours ago, jaw tight, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, which made two of us.
"You've seen it," Sungmin said. Not a question.
"Everyone's seen it," I said. "I saw it on my way here from three different people who don't even follow him."
Jiho's eyes flicked to me for the first time since I'd walked in. I'd met him twice before — label showcases, the kind of event where you say four sentences to someone and call it knowing them. He looked older up close than he did in eleven-second clips. Tired in a way that didn't photograph.
"I'm going to say something," Sungmin said, "and I need both of you to actually hear it before you react."
"That's never a good start," I said.
"Mei Lin."
"I'm listening."
He folded his hands like he was about to pray, or negotiate a hostage release. Possibly both. "We need to change the story people are telling about him. Not deny it — deny it and it just runs longer. We need a new story. Something warmer. Something people want to believe more than the version they already have."
I felt it coming about two seconds before he said it, the way you feel a car about to run a red light.
"We want you to date him."
The room did that thing where it goes very quiet and very loud at the same time.
"No," I said.
"Publicly," Sungmin continued, like I hadn't spoken. "Nothing has to be real. Dates people can photograph. A few posts. Enough to give the tabloids something else to chew on besides a married woman's marriage."
"No," I said again, in case the first one hadn't registered.
Jiho hadn't said anything this whole time. When he finally did, his voice was quieter than I expected. Rougher, too — the voice of someone who'd been talking to lawyers and publicists for twelve straight hours and had nothing left for performance.
"I didn't ask for this either," he said. Not to defend the plan. Just — stating a fact, the way you'd tell someone the weather.
"Then tell them no."
"I tried." Something moved behind his eyes, gone before I could name it. "It's not really a 'tried' kind of situation anymore."
Sungmin slid a folder across the table toward me. I didn't open it. I already knew, in the sick, sinking way you know things before you want to, exactly what would be inside it — dates, terms, a number designed to be hard to say no to, and somewhere in the fine print, a reference to a clause I'd signed two years ago when I needed the label more than I understood what I was agreeing to.
"I'm not interested," I said, and stood up, and my voice was steadier than I felt.
"Mei Lin." Sungmin didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "Sit down. There's a part of this you don't know yet."
I looked at Jiho. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read — not smug, not pleading. Just watching, like he was waiting to find out what kind of person I was going to be in the next ten seconds.
I sat back down.
"I'm listening," I said again, and this time I meant it like a threat.
