Chapter 1 - You’re Informing Me
Mid-December. Lu was doing better.
The flare up had lasted weeks. The broth became rice. The rice became chicken. The chicken became meals that stayed and the staying became routine and the routine became a body that had decided the war was over without announcing the armistice. One day she ate and didn't throw up and the next day she ate and didn't throw up and the day after that she stopped counting the minutes between eating and waiting and the not counting was the closest thing to recovery her body offered.
After class she took the subway to Gangnam. Reyes Entertainment occupied a building that looked like money designed by someone with taste. Lu walked in wearing a lavender fitted tee, jeans, sneakers, backpack over one shoulder. Her hair was down. Her color was back.
The staff at the front desk recognized her. She'd been signed there before she terminated the contract. Between that and the months of showing up to see Jin, everyone on every floor knew who Lu Marin was and nobody was asking her to sign in.
She took the elevator to the tenth floor. The doors opened onto a hallway with glass walls and the particular hush of a floor where decisions were made by people who didn't raise their voices.
Jin's office was at the end. Glass door. His name on a plaque. VP. She walked in without knocking because knocking was a concept Lu didn't apply to Jin.
He was at his desk. Laptop open. Papers spread beside it.
He looked up. Saw her. Smiled. The unguarded version. The version that existed only when she appeared in a space he hadn't expected her to appear in and the appearing rearranged his face before his face could decide to stay professional.
"You should have called," he said. "I could have picked you up."
"It's fine."
She walked to him. Leaned down. Kissed him. Brief. The commute kiss. His hand came up to her waist out of habit and she pulled back before the habit could develop into anything that would compromise the VP plaque on the door.
She sat in the chair across from his desk. Dropped her backpack on the floor. Unzipped it. Pulled out a pink lunch bag. Unzipped that. Inside was a thermos and a container. She opened the container.
Spaghetti with meatballs. The sauce red and thick. The meatballs the size of golf balls. The spaghetti slightly overcooked the way Lu's pasta was always slightly overcooked because Lu cooked pasta on her own schedule, indifferent to the recommendations on the box. A side salad in a smaller compartment. Cherry tomatoes. Cucumber. No dressing because dressing was a risk and risks were evaluated differently when your stomach kept a list of enemies.
She twirled a forkful. Ate it. Her eyes closed for a second. The pleasure of a girl eating pasta who had spent weeks unable to eat anything. Every meal since the flare up ended carried this quality. The awareness that eating was not guaranteed.
Jin's stomach growled.
Not quietly. The growl carried across the desk with the authority of a body announcing its position on spaghetti with meatballs being consumed three feet away while its owner had not eaten since a protein bar at seven in the morning.
Lu looked up. Fork suspended. The smirk arrived.
"Hungry?" she said.
"I'm fine."
His stomach growled again. Louder.
"You're not fine," Lu said. "Your stomach just called you a liar."
"I was going to eat after this meeting."
"What meeting?"
"The one I was preparing for before you walked in."
"That meeting can wait. Open."
"Lu."
"Open your mouth, Jin."
She twirled a forkful. Stabbed half a meatball onto it. Leaned across the desk. Held the fork in front of his face.
He looked at the fork. At the girl holding it with the expectant expression of someone who had made a decision about what was happening next and the decision was not negotiable.
He opened his mouth. She put the fork in. The sauce was good and the meatball was seasoned with something he couldn't identify and the identification didn't matter because a girl who couldn't eat for weeks was feeding him from a container she'd packed in a pink lunch bag and carried on a subway to the tenth floor of a building with his name on the door.
She twirled another forkful. Ate it herself. Then another. Fed him the next one. The rhythm established itself. One for her. One for him. The fork traveling between two mouths while papers sat unsigned and a laptop screen dimmed from inactivity.
"This is good," he said.
"I made it last night."
"You made meatballs."
"I make meatballs. My mom taught me when I was nine."
"You've never made me meatballs."
"You never asked."
"I'm asking now."
"Then I'll make them again." She fed him another forkful. This one had more sauce and a line of red appeared on his chin and she reached across the desk and wiped it with her thumb the way he'd wiped sauce off her cheek in September.
She ate the salad. He didn't get any of the salad because the salad was hers and the boundaries of lunch ownership applied even to boyfriends. She finished. Closed the container. Put it back in the pink lunch bag. Put the lunch bag in the backpack.
"When's your meeting?" she said.
"Twenty minutes."
"I'll wait."
"You don't have to wait."
"I'll wait. I brought homework."
She pulled a textbook from her backpack. Opened it. Crossed her legs in the chair. Started reading. The pen came out. The highlighting started. She sat across from him in a lavender tee with a textbook in her lap and a highlighter in her hand and occupied his office the way she occupied every space, completely, without apology.
Jin went back to his laptop. The screen woke up. The meeting materials were still open. He read them. He didn't absorb a single word. Across from him a girl who had been on a bathroom floor in September was sitting in his office eating pasta and feeding him meatballs and highlighting a textbook and the sitting was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen because the sitting meant she was okay and okay was a word he'd spent three months earning the right to believe.
Jin stood. Straightened his tie. Gathered the papers from his desk into a folder. Closed the laptop.
"I'll be back in an hour," he said.
"I'll be here," Lu said. Without looking up from the textbook. The highlighter moving across a sentence about ruminant digestive systems.
"Do you have a sweater?" she said. "I'm cold."
Jin looked at her. The lavender fitted tee. The bare arms. The office air conditioning doing what office air conditioning did in buildings run by people who preferred the temperature at a setting that required layers Lu hadn't packed.
He took off his suit jacket. Walked around the desk. Draped it over her shoulders. The jacket was enormous on her. The shoulders hung past hers. The sleeves covered her hands. The fabric was warm from his body and smelled like him, whatever that was, the particular scent Lu had cataloged but never described out loud.
She pulled the jacket tighter. The gesture was small and automatic. Her hands disappeared into the sleeves. She looked like a girl wearing a building.
"Thank you," she said. Still not looking up from the textbook. The highlighter kept moving. But her chin dipped into the collar for a second. Breathing it in. The second was brief and she would deny it if asked.
Jin stood there. Looking at her in his chair in his jacket in his office highlighting a textbook about cows. The jacket that had been on his body for nine hours was now on hers and the transfer felt like something larger than a jacket.
He walked to the door. Turned back once. She was reading. Curled in the chair. Buried in charcoal fabric. The pink lunch bag at her feet. The highlighter in a hand that was invisible inside his sleeve.
He went to his meeting in a white dress shirt and no jacket and when the CFO asked if he was cold Jin said no and meant it completely.
Jin came back from the meeting. Opened his office door.
Dongmin was standing in the middle of the room chewing a gummy with the satisfied expression of a man who had found something and was enjoying it publicly. His arm was extended above his head. In his hand was a bag of gummies. Lu's gummies. From the pink lunch bag that was now open on the floor with the zipper undone and the theft evident.
Lu was in front of him. Still wearing Jin's jacket. The sleeves rolled up so her hands were free. Her hand was reaching for the bag. Her hand was not reaching the bag. Dongmin was 179 centimeters. Lu was 165. The math was against her.
"Give them back," Lu said.
Dongmin held them higher. Chewing. "No. You need to share."
Lu jumped. The jacket billowed. Her fingers brushed the bottom of the bag and missed.
"They are mine," Lu said. "I bought them. With my money. From my store. They are mine, Dongmin."
Jin crossed the room in three steps. He didn't say Dongmin's name. He didn't ask for the bag. He reached up and took it out of Dongmin's hand the way he took things that belonged to Lu, without negotiation, without discussion, with the particular authority of a man whose girlfriend had just been jumped for her snacks in his office and the jumping was over now.
He handed the bag to Lu. She took it. Held it against her chest with both hands.
Dongmin looked at Jin's face. The face was not the VP face. The face was not the meeting face. The face was the version Dongmin had never seen directed at him before and the version said the thing Jin's mouth hadn't needed to say.
"I was just playing around," Dongmin said.
"Don't take her food," Jin said. The sentence was quiet. Five words. Delivered at the volume Jin used when volume was unnecessary because the content was doing the work.
"It was gummies."
"Don't take her food, Dongmin."
The repetition landed differently than the first delivery. The first was instruction. The second was warning. Dongmin was a man who understood warnings the way he understood choreography, through the body rather than the brain, and his body understood that the man standing between him and the girl in the oversized jacket had reclassified this situation from playful to serious without raising his voice.
"Okay," Dongmin said. He held up both hands. Palms out. The universal gesture of a man backing down. "Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was a thing."
"It's a thing," Jin said.
Dongmin looked at Lu. Lu looked at Dongmin from behind Jin's shoulder. She wasn't hiding behind him. She was standing behind him because he'd put himself there and the putting was not something she'd asked for but was not something she was going to reject either.
"I'm sorry," Dongmin said. To Lu. Meaning it this time. The playing around evaporating under the realization that food and Lu was not territory he should have entered.
"You took six," Lu said. "You owe me six gummies."
"I'll buy you a whole bag."
"You'll buy me two bags. Interest."
Dongmin left the office. The door closed behind him. The hallway received him back with the silence of a floor that had probably heard the exchange through the glass walls and was choosing not to comment.
Lu sat back in the chair. Pulled the jacket around her. Put the gummy bag in her lap. Ate one. Then another.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
"Yes I did."
"It was just Dongmin."
"He took your food."
"He was playing."
"I don't care."
Lu looked at him. The looking carried something she wasn't going to name out loud. The particular look of a girl who had been taking care of herself since she was old enough to carry a basket in a field and was now sitting in a chair wearing a jacket that belonged to a man who had just taken her gummies back from a boy twice her size without being asked because the taking was automatic and the automatic was the part that got her.
"You're doing the soft thing again," she said.
"I'm not doing the soft thing."
"You are. Your whole face changed when you took the bag back. You went from VP to boyfriend in one second."
"Those aren't different things."
"They are very different things. VP Jin signs contracts. Boyfriend Jin takes gummies back from Dongmin like he stole state secrets."
She ate another gummy. Jin sat at his desk. The meeting notes were in his hand. He set them down. The laptop was still dim.
"He took six," Lu said. After a minute.
"I know."
"He said four. It was six. I counted."
"I believe you."
"I'm keeping a tab."
"I know."
She ate another gummy. Jin looked at the papers he wasn't going to read. His jacket was on her and his office smelled like spaghetti and gummies and cotton candy and the particular warmth of a girl who had been in his space for two hours and rearranged its entire emotional architecture without moving a single piece of furniture.
September 27th. Lu turned nineteen.
She straightened her hair. The black curtain that was usually waves and curls fell flat and glossy past her shoulders, longer than it looked curly, reaching the middle of her back. She put on a yellow cardigan over a white tee, light wash jeans, sneakers. No makeup. The yellow made her skin look warm and the straightened hair made her look older and the combination was a version of Lu that Jin had never seen walk out of the house across the street.
He was waiting at her gate. Suit. No tie. The navy one from Salinas because the navy one had become the suit he wore when the occasion involved Lu and the occasion being Lu's birthday meant the navy suit was the only option.
She came out. He looked at her. Her hair. The yellow. The whole picture.
"Your hair," he said.
"I straightened it."
"I can see that."
"Is it bad?"
"No."
"You're staring."
"I'm looking."
"You're staring, Park."
"It's your birthday. I'm allowed to stare."
She locked her door. Walked to him. Kissed him. Brief. The greeting kiss that had become the standard in the weeks since September 1st. She pulled back and looked at the navy suit.
"Salinas suit," she said.
"It seemed right."
"Where are we going?"
"Itaewon."
She looked at him. The particular look of a girl connecting a location to a memory.
"The arcade," she said.
"The arcade."
He drove. Lu put her feet on the dashboard the way she always put her feet on the dashboard and Jin said nothing about it the way he always said nothing about it. The September air came through the cracked window. Cool. The last edge of summer dissolving into fall.
The arcade was the same arcade. Itaewon. Neon lights and machine sounds and the particular smell of popcorn and carpet that all arcades share regardless of country. Jin had bought tokens in advance. Again. She didn't ask how many. The cup he handed her was heavy.
"How many did you buy?" she said.
"Enough."
"That's not a number."
"It's the number that applies."
She started with the claw machine. The same claw machine. First try. The claw descended and grabbed a stuffed bear and carried it to the drop and the bear fell into the chute and Lu retrieved it with the calm efficiency of a girl whose claw machine record was undefeated and the undefeated was not luck. It was physics and timing and the particular stubbornness of someone who understood trajectory the way other people understood breathing.
She handed the bear to Jin. He held it. The bear joined the cow from April in the collection of stuffed animals Lu won on first attempts and gave to a man in a suit who accepted them without comment.
They played basketball. Lu scored higher than Jin. She didn't gloat. The not gloating was its own form of gloating. She simply looked at the scoreboard and then looked at him and the looking said everything the gloating would have said except quieter and therefore worse.
They raced cars. Jin won. Lu accused the machine of input lag. Jin said the machine was fine. Lu said the machine was biased toward the right seat. Jin said she'd chosen the right seat. Lu played again and won and the input lag was never mentioned again.
They played until the cup was empty and her pockets were full of tickets and the tickets were traded for a keychain she didn't need and a small rubber duck she put in her cardigan pocket and a candy necklace she put on Jin's wrist because the necklace was too small for his neck and his wrist was the only option and the option made her laugh.
They walked to the wing restaurant. The same wing restaurant. The same booth by the window. Lu sat on the same side she'd sat on in April when they were two people on a first date who didn't know what the date would become.
She ordered the same thing. Lemon pepper wings. Ranch. Coke Zero. Corn on the cob. Jin ordered the same thing because the repetition was the point. The echo of April replayed in September with the difference being that in April she'd been testing whether he was worth a second date and in September she was sitting across from her boyfriend wearing his candy necklace on a birthday that was hers and the hers mattered because Lu had spent eighteen years of birthdays in Salinas working or studying or existing without ceremony and this birthday had an arcade and a wing restaurant and a man in a navy suit who had planned the echo on purpose because Jin remembered everything.
The wings came. Lu ate three. Lemon pepper. Ranch on the side. She tore the meat in small pieces the way she tore everything and ate each piece one at a time and dipped the corn in ranch and the dipping was a technique Jin had watched in April and was watching again now with the specific attention of a man cataloging a girl's habits not because he needed to but because the cataloging was love and the love was in the noticing.
She pushed her plate toward him when she was done. Three wings left. He ate them. The system that had been built across every meal they'd shared operating on her birthday the same way it operated on every other day. Lu ate what her stomach allowed. Jin received the rest.
"This is the same booth," she said. Coke Zero in hand. Looking at the window.
"I requested it."
"You requested a booth."
"I requested this booth."
"When?"
"Last week."
"You called a wing restaurant and requested a specific booth a week in advance for my birthday."
"Yes."
"That's insane."
"That's planning."
"It's insane planning." She took a sip. Looked at him across the table. The yellow cardigan. The straightened hair falling over one shoulder. The Coke Zero catching the restaurant light. "This is the same date."
"That was the idea."
"Why?"
"Because the first one worked."
Lu looked at him. The looking lasted longer than usual. The looking carried the weight of a girl sitting in the same booth in the same restaurant on her nineteenth birthday across from the same man who had bought tokens in advance and requested a booth by the window and worn the same suit and repeated the same date because the first one had been the beginning of everything and repeating it was his way of saying the beginning still mattered.
"You're doing the soft thing," she said.
"I know."
"I'm not going to tell you to stop this time."
"Good."
She reached across the table. Found his hand. Interlaced. The gesture she'd been making since April, automatic, her fingers finding the spaces between his the way they'd found them in parked cars and hospital beds and bathroom floors. She held his hand across the table in a wing restaurant in Itaewon on her nineteenth birthday and the holding was the same as the first date and everything was the same as the first date except what they were to each other which was everything the first date had been building toward.
"Happy birthday to me," she said.
"Happy birthday to you."
"Best birthday I've ever had."
"We went to an arcade and ate wings."
"Exactly," she said. And held his hand tighter.
As they walked back to the car Lu's hand was in his. The Itaewon street was busy the way Itaewon was always busy on weekend nights, bodies and neon and music spilling out of restaurants and bars. They walked through it holding hands and not thinking about the holding because the holding had stopped being something they thought about weeks ago.
They didn't notice the girl on the corner. Early twenties. Phone out. The phone angled in their direction for six seconds. The shutter sound was off. The flash was off. The girl's face carried the particular alertness of someone who had recognized someone and the recognition was producing content.
Two photos. Jin in the navy suit. Lu in the yellow cardigan. Their hands interlaced between them. His height beside hers. The VP of Reyes Entertainment walking down an Itaewon street holding hands with a girl the internet had been calling porcelain skin girl since November.
They drove home. He walked her to her gate. She kissed him goodnight. He crossed the street. The night ended quietly. The photos were already uploaded.
By morning the photos had moved through the architecture of the internet the way all photos move, from one account to a repost to a thread to a headline. By six AM three fan accounts had identified Jin. By seven a news outlet had matched Lu. By eight the thread had twelve thousand comments and the comments were not kind.
Jin was in a meeting with Luly at the company. Nine AM. Conference room. Budget review for Q1. Luly was going through projections on the screen when the door opened.
A staff member. Young. The expression on her face was the expression of someone carrying information they did not want to deliver into a room occupied by two people they did not want to deliver it to.
"There's a scandal," she said.
Luly looked up from the projections. "What member?"
"Not Sol7. It's Park."
Jin looked at the staff member. "Me?"
"Photos leaked last night. You and Lu Marin. Holding hands in Itaewon. They're everywhere."
The staff member held up her tablet. The screen showed the photos. Jin in the navy suit. Lu in the yellow cardigan. Their hands. The Itaewon street. The neon behind them. The image was clear enough to identify and blurry enough to feel stolen.
"Fans and the public are finding it problematic," the staff member said. The words came out rehearsed. The rehearsal of someone who had practiced this delivery in the hallway before walking in. "A few months ago CEO Reyes and Sol7's Jeon Haesoo confirmed their relationship. Now the VP is dating a former artist signed to the same company. The narrative forming online is that Reyes Entertainment leadership is dating their talent pool. People are questioning the company's professionalism. Why are the higher ups dating their artists."
The room was quiet. The projections still glowed on the screen. The budget numbers sat beside a tablet showing two people holding hands on a street and the holding that had felt private twelve hours ago was now a headline.
Jin looked at the photos. At his hand around Lu's. At her yellow cardigan catching the Itaewon light. At the face of a girl whose birthday had ended with a walk to a car and a fan with a phone and a shutter sound that was turned off.
Luly set down her pen. She looked at the tablet. Looked at Jin. Looked at the staff member.
"Close the door," Luly said.
The staff member closed the door.
The door opened again. Four bodies came through it in rapid succession.
Dongmin first. Then Joon. Then Taeyul. Then Haesoo. Four men entering a conference room with the coordinated urgency of people who had seen something on their phones and walked very fast down a hallway.
"Is it true?" Dongmin said.
"Are you two dating?" Taeyul said.
"I knew it," Joon said. Arms crossed. The posture of a man whose theory had been confirmed and the confirmation was producing satisfaction rather than surprise.
Luly looked at the four of them. Then at Haesoo. Her boyfriend. Standing in her conference room beside three men who had just burst in uninvited during a budget review.
"Really, Haesoo?" she said.
Haesoo held up both hands. The defensive posture of a man who had arrived at a location under circumstances he wanted to clarify before judgment was delivered.
"They dragged me in here," he said. "They said you wouldn't scold us if I was here."
"You wanted to know too," Joon said. Looking at Haesoo without turning his head. "Don't act innocent. You saw the photos and said oh and then walked faster than all of us down the hallway."
"I said oh because I was surprised."
"You said oh and then you said I knew it and then you walked faster than all of us."
"That's not what happened."
"That is exactly what happened. Dongmin was behind you. Dongmin, confirm."
"Confirmed," Dongmin said. Without hesitation. The loyalty of a witness who had no allegiance to accuracy but absolute allegiance to the moment.
Haesoo looked at Luly. Luly looked at Haesoo. The look between them carried the particular negotiation of a couple in a professional setting where one of them was the CEO and the other was a member of the group the CEO managed and the member had just been caught sprinting down a hallway for gossip about his CEO's business partner.
"I was concerned," Haesoo said. Adjusting the framing. "As a member of this company. About the company's reputation."
"You were concerned," Luly said.
"Professionally."
"You ran down a hallway professionally."
"I walked quickly. With professional concern."
Joon looked at Jin. "So is it true?"
Jin was sitting at the conference table. The tablet with the photos was still in front of him. The budget projections were still on the screen. Four members of Sol7 were standing in the doorway of a meeting they hadn't been invited to asking about his relationship status while a staff member stood in the corner trying to become invisible.
"Yes," Jin said.
Dongmin's face split open. The grin was enormous. The grin of a man who had been asking where Jin went every night in Seaside and had been told nowhere and was now receiving confirmation that nowhere was a girl in a yellow cardigan whose gummies he owed six of.
"I knew it," Dongmin said. "I knew it in Salinas. The birria smell. The driving. The hand-holding at the flea market. I knew it."
"Everyone knew it," Joon said. "Knowing it was not an achievement. Not knowing it would have required a level of obliviousness that doesn't exist in nature."
"I knew it first," Dongmin said.
"You knew nothing first. You speculated loudly. That's different from knowing."
"Speculation that turns out to be correct is just early knowledge."
"That's not how knowledge works."
"Congratulations," Taeyul said. To Jin. Quietly. Cutting through the noise with the precision of a man who understood that someone in this room should say the normal thing.
"Thank you," Jin said.
"She's good for you," Taeyul said. "You smile more."
"He does the soft thing," Dongmin said. "Lu told me about the soft thing. His whole face changes."
"Can we focus?" Luly said. The CEO voice. The voice that could silence a room of executives and was now being deployed on four men who had abandoned whatever they were supposed to be doing to sprint down a hallway for relationship confirmation. "There are photos online. The public narrative is that this company's leadership is dating its artists. That's what we're dealing with right now. Not congratulations. Not who knew first."
The room went quiet. The four boys recalibrated from gossip mode to professional mode with varying degrees of success. Dongmin's grin reduced but did not fully disappear. Joon's arms stayed crossed. Taeyul nodded. Haesoo stood beside Luly and said nothing because he understood that his girlfriend was now handling a situation that involved his relationship as precedent and his presence was support, not commentary.
"Out," Luly said. "All four of you. We'll handle this."
They filed out. Dongmin last. He turned in the doorway.
"For the record," he said. "I'm happy for you."
"Out, Dongmin."
He left. The door closed. The conference room held two people and a staff member and a tablet showing two hands interlaced on an Itaewon street and the budget projections still glowing on a screen that nobody was looking at anymore.
Luly dismissed the staff member. The door closed. The conference room was just the two of them now.
"Options," Luly said. She sat back in her chair. CEO mode. The mode that solved problems the way other people solved equations, by identifying variables and eliminating the ones that didn't serve the outcome.
"We can ignore it," Jin said.
"We can't ignore it. The narrative is already formed. CEO dates artist. VP dates artist. The company looks like a dating pool for leadership. That damages credibility. That damages the boys."
"Lu isn't signed with us anymore. She terminated the contract."
"The public doesn't know that. They know her face was on our CFs. They know she was part of the dance group we signed. Terminated or not, the association exists."
"Then we clarify. Public statement. Lu terminated her contract months ago. She's not affiliated with Reyes Entertainment."
"That clarifies the professional issue. It doesn't address the optics of you and me both dating people who were connected to this company."
"Haesoo is still signed."
"Haesoo is still signed. That's my problem to manage. Your situation is different because Lu is out. The question is whether we get ahead of this or let it breathe."
"What does getting ahead look like?"
"Short statement from the company. Park Jin and Lu Marin are in a personal relationship. Lu Marin is not currently affiliated with Reyes Entertainment. Her contract was terminated at her request prior to the relationship. The company's professional standards remain intact."
"That's clean."
"Clean is what we need."
"And Haesoo?"
"Haesoo and I confirmed months ago. That's settled. The issue isn't the individual relationships. The issue is the pattern. Two relationships. Same company. Both with talent. That's the story they're writing."
Jin looked at the tablet. The photos. The yellow cardigan. The hand-holding. The birthday that was twelve hours old and already a headline.
"Lu doesn't know yet," he said.
"She'll know by the time she checks her phone."
"She doesn't read comments."
"She won't have to. Someone will tell her. Someone always tells you."
Luly pulled her laptop toward her. Started drafting. Her fingers moved fast. The statement taking shape on the screen in the precise, measured language of a woman who had been writing statements since she was old enough to understand what statements protected.
Jin's phone buzzed. He looked at the screen. A news alert. He opened it.
The headline sat on his screen in bold Korean characters. He read it. Read it again. The second reading did not improve the content.
"Luly," he said.
She looked up from the laptop. He turned his phone toward her.
The article was from a different outlet. Not the fan photos. A commentary piece. The headline translated to something close to: REYES VP PARK JIN, 24, SPOTTED WITH FORMER ARTIST LU MARIN, 19 — THE AGE GAP DRAWING PUBLIC SCRUTINY.
Luly read the headline. Read the first paragraph. The paragraph laid out the ages. Twenty-four and nineteen. The five-year gap. The fact that Lu had been eighteen when she was signed to Reyes Entertainment. The fact that Jin was VP at the time. The paragraph didn't accuse. It implied. The implication was worse than an accusation because implication lived in the space between words where readers filled in what they wanted to fill in and what they wanted to fill in was always worse than what was written.
"They're framing the timeline," Luly said. Quietly. Reading further. "They're suggesting the relationship started while she was signed. While she was eighteen. While you were her VP."
"It didn't."
"I know it didn't. The public doesn't know when it started. The public sees a twenty-four-year-old executive dating a nineteen-year-old former artist who was under his company at eighteen. The ages do the work. The timeline does the rest."
"She terminated the contract in December. We started dating in September."
"September of this year. She was signed from November to December of last year. The gap between her termination and the relationship is nine months. That's defensible. But the ages are the headline. The ages are what people see first."
Jin looked at his phone. At the ages in the headline. Twenty-four and nineteen. The numbers sitting side by side in bold text as if the numbers alone were a verdict. Five years. The same five years that existed between them when he cooked for her and held her hair and sat on bathroom floors and fed her broth. Five years that had never felt like a distance when they were inside them and now felt like an accusation when they were printed on a screen.
"Does Lu know?" Luly said.
"I don't know."
"Call her."
Jin picked up his phone. Opened Lu's contact. The contact that said Lu. The contact he'd stared at for months from kitchen tables and airplane seats and Seaside bedrooms. He pressed call.
It rang. Three times.
"Hey babe," Lu said. Her voice was normal. Morning voice. The slight rasp of someone who had just woken up or was still in the process of waking up. The voice of a girl who had not yet checked her phone.
"Have you been online today?" Jin said.
"I just woke up. Why?"
Jin looked at Luly. Luly looked at Jin. The look carried the shared weight of two people about to deliver information to a girl whose birthday was yesterday and whose birthday photos were now being dissected by strangers on the internet.
"Don't go online," Jin said. "I'm coming home. I'll explain when I get there."
Silence on the line. The particular silence of Lu processing a sentence and extracting from it everything the sentence was trying not to say.
"Jin," she said. The rasp was gone. The voice was sharp now. Awake. "What happened?"
"Someone took photos of us last night. Holding hands. In Itaewon."
"Okay."
"There are articles."
"About us holding hands."
"About us. About the company. About the age difference."
The silence that followed was longer. The silence of a girl lying in bed in a house in Yongsan whose birthday had ended twelve hours ago with a kiss at a gate and was now continuing with a phone call about articles she hadn't read containing numbers she couldn't change.
"I'll be here," she said. And hung up.
Jin drove home. Fast. Parked. Crossed the street. Took off his shoes at her entrance. She was in the kitchen. Coke Zero on the counter. Hair still straight from yesterday. She was wearing one of his t-shirts and shorts and her face was the face of a girl who had been told don't go online and had not gone online and the not going was costing her.
He told her. The photos. The articles. The fan accounts. The age gap headline. The narrative forming about the company. He told her standing in her kitchen in his suit with his phone in his hand and her face across from him getting quieter with every sentence.
When he finished she was leaning against the counter with her arms crossed and her Coke Zero untouched.
"Don't respond," she said.
"Lu."
"It's not their business."
"I know it's not their business. But the narrative is already—"
"It's not their business, Jin. We held hands. On my birthday. On a street. That's it. We didn't commit a crime. We didn't hurt anyone. I'm nineteen. You're twenty-four. Those are our ages. Those are facts. Facts are not scandals."
"It's going to affect Sol7 if we don't respond. The company's credibility is tied to the boys. If the public is questioning Reyes leadership then the boys take the hit. Their comeback is in one month."
Lu looked at him. The particular stillness that preceded something she was going to say that she meant completely.
"So why are you telling me?" she said.
"What?"
"Why are you telling me. If you're already going to do whatever you want. If the statement is getting released regardless of what I think. If Luly already drafted it. If the decision is made. Why did you drive here to ask me when you're not actually asking me."
"I am asking you."
"No you're not. You're informing me. Those are different things. You already decided this needs a response. Luly already wrote one. You came here to tell me it's happening, not to ask if it should."
Jin stood in the kitchen. His mouth opened. Closed. The opening and closing of a man who had a counterargument and was watching it dissolve against the accuracy of what she'd just said.
"Just go to work," Lu said. She picked up her Coke Zero. Walked past him. Toward the bathroom.
"Lu."
She didn't answer. She went into the bathroom. Closed the door. The lock clicked.
Jin stood in the kitchen. The Coke Zero ring was on the counter where she'd been leaning. The house was quiet except for the faucet running behind the bathroom door. The running was not a shower. The running was the sound of a girl turning on water so that whatever she was doing behind the door couldn't be heard through it.
He stood there for a long time. Then he put on his shoes and left and closed her door behind him and drove to a company where a statement was waiting for his approval about a relationship he'd just been told was not their business by the person the relationship belonged to.
Jin walked into Luly's office. Closed the door. Sat in the chair across from her desk.
"She said don't respond," he said. "It's not their business."
"And?"
"Release it."
Luly looked at him. The looking was brief. Confirmation rather than surprise. She'd known what he'd say before he sat down because she'd known him for eighteen years and eighteen years meant knowing that the man in the chair separated the personal from the operational the way other people separated work from home. Completely. Without bleeding.
"She's going to be angry," Luly said.
"She's already angry."
"This will make it worse."
"The boys' comeback is in one month. If the narrative runs unchecked for another forty-eight hours the damage reaches them. Haesoo. Minjae. Dongmin. All of them. Seven people who have nothing to do with who I held hands with on a street in Itaewon. I'm not letting that happen."
Luly opened the laptop. The draft was where she'd left it. The cursor blinked at the end of the paragraph.
"Read it back to me," Jin said.
Luly read it. The statement was clean. Three sentences. Reyes Entertainment confirms VP Park Jin and Lu Marin are in a personal relationship. Lu Marin's contract with Reyes Entertainment was terminated at her request in December, prior to the relationship. The company maintains clear professional boundaries between its leadership and its artists.
"Add a line," Jin said. "Reyes Entertainment asks that the privacy of all parties be respected."
Luly typed the line. Looked at him.
"Approved?" she said.
"Approved."
She sent it. The email left her outbox and entered the machinery of public communications. Within the hour it would be on every outlet that had run the photos. Within two hours it would be the official record. Within three hours Lu would see it or someone would tell her about it and the telling would produce a reaction Jin could calculate with the same precision he calculated extraction timelines and mission variables.
She'd be angry. The anger would be specific. He'd told her he was asking. He wasn't asking. He'd gone to her house and stood in her kitchen and presented the situation as a question when the answer was already built and the building had happened without her. She'd see the statement and she'd know he'd released it after she said no and the knowing would land in the place where Lu stored evidence that people made decisions about her life without consulting her. The same place the phone snatching had landed. The same place the let's stop had landed. The same territory.
He knew this. He calculated the cost the way he calculated every cost. Precisely. With full awareness of what was being spent and what was being purchased. The purchase was protection for seven boys whose careers depended on a company that couldn't afford to look compromised. The cost was a girl in a bathroom with the faucet running who had told him no and was about to find out that no had not been enough.
"She terminated the contract in December," Jin said. Looking at the window. "She paid the termination fee herself. Cash. She earned that exit. And now we're issuing a statement about her like she's still under us."
"We're issuing a statement about the company. She's mentioned because the situation involves her."
"She didn't choose to be involved."
"Nobody chooses to be photographed on a street. The photo exists. The articles exist. The involvement exists whether she chose it or not."
"I know."
"Then stop punishing yourself for making the right call."
"I'm not punishing myself."
"You're sitting in my office running the math on how angry she's going to be instead of moving to the next item. That's punishment. You made the call. The call is correct. Move forward."
Jin looked at Luly. Luly looked at Jin. Two people who had been trained on an island to make decisions that cost something and execute them without hesitation. The training worked on missions and extractions and corporate strategy. The training did not account for a girl in a yellow cardigan whose birthday had become a headline and whose boyfriend had just authorized a statement she'd told him not to release.
"Go handle the media briefing," Luly said. "I'll call the boys' managers. We get ahead of this today. By tomorrow the news cycle has something else to eat."
Jin stood. Straightened his tie. The gesture was automatic. The same gesture he made before every meeting and every mission and every moment that required the professional version of himself to override the personal version. The tie straightened. The face settled. The man who had been sitting on a bathroom floor holding a sick girl's hand three weeks ago walked out of the office as the VP who had just authorized a press statement about her without her consent.
He handled the media briefing. He answered questions. He managed the narrative with the same tactical precision he'd applied to every operational crisis in his career. He was good at this. Efficient. Clear. The reporters got their answers and the answers were measured and professional and contained nothing that could be used against the company or the boys or Lu.
He did his job. He did it well.
At six o'clock he drove home. Parked on the street. Sat in the car. Looked at Lu's house across the street. The lights were on. The gate was closed. His phone had no messages from her. The absence of messages told him she knew. Someone had told her or she'd seen it or the internet had delivered it to her the way the internet delivers everything, without asking, without warning, without caring who was on the receiving end.
He sat in the car for ten minutes. Then he got out. Crossed the street. Stood at her gate.
His hand went to the latch. Stopped.
He'd made the right call. He knew he'd made the right call. The boys were protected. The company was protected. The narrative was managed. The statement was clean and factual and respectful.
He'd also done exactly what she'd accused him of. He'd gone to her house pretending to ask. He'd left and done what he'd already planned to do. He'd made a decision about her life without her permission and released it to the public and the public now owned a piece of something she'd told him was not their business.
He stood at her gate. The hinge waited. The lights were on behind her curtains.
He went back to his house. Closed the door. Sat at his kitchen table. The cows on the shelf. The window facing her house. The lights across the street burning steady and silent and the silence was Lu's and the silence was earned and he sat with it because sitting with it was the only honest thing left to do tonight.
