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“Kaiya!” someone called my name, barely audible over the cacophony. “Taxi! Let’s go!”

I headed towards the voice. Anything to get out of this maelstrom. I followed the arm waving above the crowd, to the person calling my name, until eventually I pushed through the crowd to a black taxi parked by the bus. Someone in a black cap and what looked like an ENT lanyard stood beside it, holding the door open, gesturing for me to get in.

More people ran past us, pointing and chattering excitedly, already raising their phones, and I ducked my head as if I was pushing forth against a bracing wind, until I reached the taxi. In relief, I slid onto the backseat.

The door began to close.

“Oh shit, wait!” My hand reached out to hold the door open. “My bags! They’re in the–”

My voice died when I saw who was closing the door of the taxi, maybe because my heart had jumped into my throat.

“Hana,” I exhaled roughly.

She slammed the door shut and slapped the roof of the taxi twice.

“Wait–no!” I lunged towards the driver, but the car was already pulling away from the pavement, throwing me back against the headrest. I slid around on the leather seat as we manoeuvred sharply around the hordes of people still flowing around us to get to GVibes. I twisted in my seat to look out the back window. I could still see the staff queuing outside the bus, but the large crowd that had surrounded the members seemed to have fractured. People in neon-green jackets were moving between them now, seemingly tearing apart the mass. I was thrown off balance a moment later, and I twisted back around.

The taxi was a study in contrast. Despite my thudding heart, it was unnervingly quiet, the hum of the air conditioning and the thrum of the engine barely audible over the screams of the crowds.

“Monsieur,” I stammered, trying to get the driver’s attention. “S’il vous plaît…” I fumbled uselessly through my rudimentary French, before growling in frustration and hitting the back of his seat. “Stop!”

He didn’t, barely glancing over his shoulder as we joined the queue of cars leaving the airport.

I fumbled for my phone, nearly dropping it in my haste. It powered on, but NO SERVICE ran across the top of the screen.

“Fuck!”

My head swivelled round, and my hand reached for the door handle in a move born from panic. I yanked at it, but it clanked uselessly. Locked, but what would I have done? Thrown myself out of a moving car?

I peered out the window, putting my hands on the glass. We weren’t going fast, stuck in the line of traffic leaving the airport.

I twisted towards the driver again, which was when I noticed the person in the passenger seat, but what I saw first was the bulky camera attached to their phone. It was pointed in my direction.

“What’s happening?” I cried. “Where are we going?”

The woman holding the camera jerked sideways as we took a corner, but the lens never left my face. She barked questions at me. It was English, but heavily accented. I could barely make her out, over my mounting panic, but I did hear two words:

‘Jihoon’ and ‘girlfriend.’

Oh god, oh god, I was going to be sick.

I pressed myself further back into the seat, leather creaking under me, heaving air in through my mouth but feeling like I had a hole in my throat.

“Please, please stop the car,” I gasped.

The woman kept shouting at me, but my heart was pounding too loud for me to hear, and my brain hadn’t had enough time to adjust to the sudden change in accents yet.

All I kept hearing was, “Jihoon. Girlfriend.”

The car lurched to a halt, and I glimpsed a line of red through the windshield. Traffic lights. Frantically, I yanked on the handle again.

Pounding on the driver’s window made me yelp, pressing into the seat as my hands rose to cover my ears, and then shouting, loud, overlapping voices. Someone slapped the driver’s window again and he lurched away as if he worried the glass might break. He shouted something, holding up his hands, and then reached for the central lock. A click sounded before my door was wrenched open, and a gust of warm air blew my hair back from my face. My eyes travelled upwards.

Black trousers, a heaving chest, wild, coffee brown eyes.

Jihoon.

“Kaiya!” My name was an exhalation and a question all in one, and something in me broke at the sight of him, but I held myself together through some half-buried survival instinct.