by Jessica Jung
Is he serious?
“Do you really have to ask? Didn’t you hear what those girls were saying?”
He nods sympathetically. “Yeah. It’s tough hearing other people’s opinions about your performance. It never really gets easier.” He puts an arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the food stalls. “But I know what’ll cheer you up. Caramel popcorn!”
Huh? I blink, thrown off by how quickly he’s moved on from what those girls said. Doesn’t he understand—it’s not about their opinions; it’s about how sexist and inappropriate they were being, gushing over Jason and shitting all over me and Mina. I open my mouth to say something but close it again when I see how hard he’s trying to cheer me up, talking excitedly as he orders the biggest bucket of caramel popcorn on the menu. So far it’s been the perfect day, and I don’t want to ruin it. This is our first official date, after all.
So I swallow my words and grab the popcorn instead.
* * *
“I need to introduce you to the other woman in my life.”
“Sorry, what?”
Later that night Jason and I are strolling around a quiet neighborhood that I’ve never been to before—and where he swears no one will recognize us even after we wash off our faces. He leads me into a pojangmacha where the owner, an ahjumma wearing a matching red apron and hairnet, is serving up odeng, tteokbokki, mini kimbap, and soju. The air inside the small red-tented bar is thick with the cozy smells of classic Korean street food, and my stomach rumbles as I inhale deeply.
“Ah, my favorite customer,” the ahjumma says brightly, coming forward to pinch Jason’s cheeks. “You haven’t been to see me in weeks! You look too skinny.”
“Ahnyounghasaeyo,” he says, bowing. He halts, looking at her face incredulously. “Eemo, I swear, you’re getting younger every time I see you. What’s your secret? If you keep going on like this, your tent is going to be filled with handsome young boys asking you out on dates.”
She laughs, ushering us onto a pair of plastic stools and handing us a plate of tteokbokki and steaming skewers of odeng. “Ah, you flatter me. Go on, then, eat with your pretty girlfriend.”
Jason winks at me before turning back to her. “Girlfriend? You think she’s my girlfriend? Oh, Eemo, you hurt me! You know I only have eyes for you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Aigoo, silly boy. I know what you’re after.” She reaches for a platter of tuna kimbap—the roll bursting at the seams with spicy canned tuna fish, perilla leaves, imitation crab sticks, yellow radish, carrots, eggs, spinach, and burdock root—and lowers it ceremoniously onto our table. “Now eat, you two.” She gives Jason a warm smile before returning to her spot behind the makeshift counter.
I take a huge bite of odeng, the fish cake filling me with warmth from head to toe. Jason grins. “What do you think? It’s the best, right? Try the kimbap next. It’s the best in Seoul.”
I smile back and nod. But even with the warmth of the odeng, I still can’t forget what happened at Lotte World. It wasn’t just about what the girls said. It was Jason’s reaction to it. Or rather, his nonreaction. I shake my head and take another bite of odeng. Forget it, Rachel. Just enjoy the day. Don’t make this into a thing.
“Ahjumma!” a voice at the table next to us yells. “Another bottle of soju!”
Jason and I glance over in the direction of the voice. Three girls are sitting around a table eating plates full of dalkbal and gyeran mari, but one of them is clearly wasted, chugging soju straight from the bottle, her delicately polished seashell-swirl nails digging into the green glass.
I freeze. Where have I seen those nails before?
Seventeen
I remember right before we moved to Seoul, I took Leah to the ice-cream shop down the block from our apartment. It was winter, and Umma thought we were going across the street to the library, but Leah had begged for “one last ice cream to remember New York by,” and I had given in like I usually did. We had only a few minutes before Umma expected us back, but Leah ordered the largest cone they had and gobbled it up instantly, strawberry ice cream smearing all over her face.
This is the image that flashes to mind as I watch Kang Jina jam a piece of dalkbal in her mouth, the spicy sauce dribbling down her chin. She’s chewing so ferociously I can almost feel the crispy snap! of boneless grilled chicken feet—more delicious than any chicken wing New York could ever dream of—between her teeth. She washes it down with a swig of soju, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her two friends sitting across from her try to slow her down, but she swats them away. I can’t quite believe it, but it’s definitely her.
“Is that…?” Jason’s voice trails off, his shocked expression mirroring my own.
At that moment, Jina turns her head and looks right at me. Or more like right through me—her soju-weary eyes seem to be having a hard time focusing on anything around her. One of her friends tries to take the bottle out of her hand, and she snaps, “It’s mine! You can’t take it away.” Her eyes are wild now as she scans the room, and her gaze falls on Jason. She rises from the table, the bottle slipping out of her hands with a clatter, her eyes swinging back to me as she sways toward us like a drunken tiger.
“You,” she says, pointing a finger at me, her speech slurred. “I know you. Rachel Kim. You look like you’re on a date. Didn’t I warn you about dating?”
At this, she jabs a thumb in Jason’s direction. He raises his eyebrows in confusion, eyes swiveling between me and Jina. I have no idea how to respond, so I do the first thing that comes to mind. I pull out a chair.
“Please sit down,” I say. “How are you? Have you… been well?”
She lets out a bark of laughter. “Oh please. Don’t give me that pity bullshit. I know you know I got kicked out of DB. The whole fucking world knows. Or no, I’m sorry.” She flops down onto the chair, crossing her legs and nearly falling off before regaining her composure and smiling widely. “I ‘chose not to re-sign.’ ” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “That’s the story they’re telling everyone, isn’t it?”
My brow furrows. “What do you mean that’s the story they’re telling?”
“Come on, Rachel,” Jina says, the smile wilting off her face. “You of all people must know how two-faced the K-pop world is. DB controls everything about our lives, and all of a sudden I’m the one who can’t handle this lifestyle? Everything I ever wore or ever said or ever did was because they told me to! All this shit”—she flashes up her fancy nails, her voice rising—“the expensive clothes, the makeup, the beauty products, it’s all so DB can turn us into whoever they want us to be, make us look perfect for public consumption. And they’re saying I’m the one who’s a diva?”
She scoots her chair near mine, leaning in so close that I can smell the soju on her breath. “Listen, Rachel. Know what you’re getting yourself into. When you sign that contract, you’re losing ten years of your life—”
“Wait, I thought K-pop contracts only last for seven years? Isn’t that the law?”
Jina’s eyes widen, her mouth curling in another maniacal laugh. “Oh, you naive child. You think DB doesn’t have a way to get around whatever laws they want? Somewhere in some bank in Switzerland, in some secure vault, are the three-year-extension contracts DB forced me and the rest of Electric Flower to sign the same day we signed our original contracts. Postdated, of course, so everything will hold up in court.” Her eyes focus in on me, an almost pitying look now mingling with her soju-fueled rage. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? This glamour? This fame? It’s all an illusion set up by the label. The execs. And then they’ll take everything away from you, framing you as an irresponsible, high-maintenance diva, so that no other label will want to touch you with a ten-foot pole.” She laughs, but it comes out as a sob. “They’ll fucking ruin you and make it seem like you’re the one who destroyed yourself. Look at me. My career is over.”
“But why?” I say. My mind is whirring as I try to make sense of what she’s saying. “Why would they d
o this to you?”
“What did I tell you, Rachel?” Jina stabs a toothpick into our tteokbokki, holding my gaze. “It’s dangerous to have a boyfriend as a K-pop star.”
My stomach sinks. “The guy you were with in Jeju? Song Gyumin?”
She nods and her voice grows soft. “The great Song Gyumin. When his first seven years were up, he renegotiated for a better deal. More money. He thought it would be the same for me. He said he was taking me on a ‘secret getaway’ to talk about it all. Some fucking secret, right? The honeymoon capital of the fucking country? And now… well. Secret’s out. DB’s cut and run. And so has he.” She takes a shaky breath as I process her words.
“You mean… Wait. You mean he broke up with you?”
Jina covers her face with her hands. Then suddenly, she lets out a scream and smashes her fist onto the plate, tteokbokki sauce flying everywhere and spraying me in the face.
“Of course he broke up with me! That’s how all these stories end. We get boyfriends, we let them ruin our lives, and they get away, scot-free and blameless. You think his label gives a shit about him having a girlfriend? Of course they don’t. It’s one set of rules for them and another set of rules for us. DB talks about us being a family. But they don’t care. They don’t care about me. About you. They don’t care about anyone. All they care about is making us into perfect K-pop machines that will do everything they say and rake in the money for them. Well, DB can go fuck themselves. Mr. Noh, Mr. Choo, everybody. Fuck them! I know secrets that would set the K-pop world on fire!”
Jina’s friends appear at her sides, each of them taking an arm and lifting her from her chair. “Jina sweetie, time to go,” one of them says.
As they lead her out of the pojangmacha, Jina locks eyes with me again and shouts, “Watch out for Mr. Choo, Rachel. Don’t get any more mixed up with him or his precious daughter than you already have. You hear me?”
She disappears from the tent, her shouts fading into the night. I don’t realize until then that I’m shaking. What did she mean she knows secrets that would set the K-pop world on fire? And why did she keep talking about Mr. Choo? I want to forget it, along with the rest of this terrible date, but the look on Jina’s face, the sound of her scream—it’s all permanently burned into my brain. Suddenly, my whole body starts to ache, the kimbap and tteokbokki I ate curdling into a hard pit at the bottom of my stomach.
I look across the table at Jason, who’s mopping up the tteokbokki sauce. “Poor Jina,” Jason says, shaking his head. “It really sucks what she’s going through. She’s obviously distressed.”
Something about the way he says it makes me look at him sharply. “Well, of course. You heard everything she said, didn’t you? How could she not be distressed?”
He nods. “I heard. But also, I don’t know. There are two sides to every story. It’s true that DB doesn’t pay us well, but like Jina says, they also provide us with clothes and apartments. It’s not that hard to make ends meet if you’re careful.” He shrugs. “I mean, I’ve always been treated pretty well by them.”
“That’s because you’re Jason Lee,” I say, frustration building in my chest as I think of what Jina said about Gyumin. “Of course they treat you well! The worst thing you’ve ever done is steal Romeo’s custom orange hair color!”
“What?” Jason looks at me, perplexed.
I sigh. Now is not the time to get into the DB rumor mill. “It’s not important. But don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the double standard in the industry. It’s different for girls than it is for guys.”
His brow furrows and I blink, my doubt from earlier in the day rushing furiously back.
“You have noticed, haven’t you?” I say, flashing back to practice a few weeks ago, Jason strolling in late with an armful of Lotteria, smiling casually at the execs.
“To be honest, not really.” He frowns. “At the end of the day, DB is a business. It doesn’t really benefit them to treat the guys differently than the girls.”
My throat is tight. Is he for real? “What about the girls at Lotte World? You heard for yourself the praise they had for you versus the nasty things they had to say about me and Mina.”
“Rachel, that’s just a couple people’s opinions. Everyone deals with it—even me. It doesn’t mean the whole industry is sexist or biased or whatever.”
I suck in a breath.
Oh. Wow. He is for real. I laugh in disbelief, wiping my hands against my face and shaking my head. “For someone who lives and breathes K-pop, it’s amazing how little of it you really see.”
His frown deepens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The red tent flaps open and I turn my head, looking at the couple who’s just walked into the pojangmacha and is glancing at Jason and me with curious expressions. Panic rises in my throat like bile. Do they recognize us?
A sinking feeling starts to spread throughout my body, and I realize it’s been growing inside me ever since that day eating naengmyeon with my family. Ever since Leah told me about Jina not re-signing with Electric Flower.
I was wrong.
But so was Jina. She told me that being with Jason wouldn’t just be difficult; it would be dangerous. And it is. But it’s also unjust. I gave my life to DB, and in the end this decision—a decision we both made—will destroy me. And only me. In the end I will be the only one who’s forced to walk away from everything I’ve worked for—the fans, the music, the magic. For the first time in a long time, I can feel the threads of my life start to weave together with perfect clarity. And they’re all pulling me toward one obvious conclusion: I might want to be with Jason, but I need to debut. And being with Jason could cost me my career before it even begins.
The pressure builds in my chest, making it hard to breathe. “I can’t believe I let things go so far between us. This will ruin me.”
Jason’s face softens. He reaches across the table and grabs my hands. “Hey, don’t talk like that. Whatever happened with Kang Jina and her boyfriend, it’s different between us. We’ll tell Mr. Noh that we really care about each other and he’ll understand. In fact, he’ll probably be happy for us.”
“Happy for us?” I snap, pulling my hands away from his. “Open your eyes, Jason. They might bend the rules for you and Song Gyumin, but not for me. One more misstep and I’m out of DB. Kang Jina was one of their biggest stars and they didn’t just kick her out—they ruined her. And they didn’t look back. Imagine how dispensable I am as a trainee!”
“Please, Rachel, you know they’re not like that,” Jason pleads. “They would never do that to you just because you’re dating me.”
I stare at him and I realize that nothing I say is going to make him understand that things are different for me than they are for him. Jason might be the “Angel Boy” of DB, but I’ve had to fight every step of the way, and I still feel like I’m barely hanging on. DB would have no problem cutting me the moment they find a blemish that could tarnish their squeaky-clean, picture-perfect reputation. And a relationship with Jason would be an irreversible blemish.
“It’s over, Jason,” I say, standing up from the table. “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve worked too hard for my dreams to let anything stand in my way. Even you.”
Jason stares at me, completely in shock. “I can’t believe how badly you’re overreacting.”
My heart splinters at his words. Whatever I was hoping he would say, that wasn’t it. I walk out of the pojangmacha without looking back. I can hear Jason calling after me, but I don’t care. Once I’m outside, I break into a run. I don’t stop until I’m on the subway, out of breath and brokenhearted.
I swallow the lump in my throat, refusing to cry. I did the right thing.
I think of Yujin and how she put her career on the line to help me make a viral video, how she supports me even when it gets her into trouble. I think of my family. I feel ashamed of how I almost let them all down again. How I almost threw away everything I’ve been working toward for the last six years.
Just me, regular trainee life, and completely avoiding Jason Lee.
Eighteen
My plan for avoiding Jason was simple: Turn the other way when I see him walking down the hall, don’t make eye contact during training, and most importantly, imagine his face on the punching bag at Appa’s gym.
And it worked. Five days later, I’ve clocked more hours at the boxing gym than I have in the last six months. “Oof!” Appa groans as I land a hard punch, the bag digging into his stomach. “Careful—your old man isn’t what he used to be.”
“Sorry, Appa,” I say, taking a minute to wipe the sweat off my face but quickly getting back into my punching stance.
“How about we take a break? I’m worried you’re going to crack a rib.”
“My ribs feel fine,” I say.
“I didn’t mean one of yours.” Appa grins and pats the floor beside him as he sinks down, groaning with exhaustion. “So,” he says as I sit down next to him. “Anything on your mind?”
I sigh. There’s plenty on my mind but nothing I want to talk about. With anyone. “No, Appa. Everything is fine.”
Appa narrows his eyes, taking in my tired face and the forced smile on my lips. After a moment, though, he seems to accept my answer. “Okay. If you say so.”
“I do. Now… why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you?”
“Actually, I do have something to tell you.” Appa reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls out a crumpled white piece of card stock, handing it to me with a shy grin. Curious, I take it, slowly unfolding the paper. As I read, my eyes light up.
“Appa! This is an invitation to your law school graduation! It’s next week!”
