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“We’re the only thing that works.”

I shook my head, even as every argument I’d ever had evaporated.

“I need you,” he said, stepping towards me, slow and certain, like he already knew I wouldn’t move away. “I want you.”

Weakly, I tried to protest, but he crowded me, and I backed up until my shoulders hit the wall. He pressed forward until we were body to body. Not even air separated us.

“Tell me no…”

I moaned as I turned my head, eyes immediately assaulted with the bright light that only came from morning sunlight through hotel curtains. My hand reached across the empty, cool sheets for the blaring alarm. My fingers curled around my phone, and as I lifted it up, I groaned again when I saw the time, letting my hand drop back down. Time to go.

Chapter 5

I found my seat and sat down, watching the rest of the passengers filing on and finding their seats. Most people were in groups, talking and helping to shove bags into the overhead compartments until finally, the only people in the aisles were the attendants, bustling up and down, doing pre-flight checks, and whatever it is they needed to do to get a plane in the air.

I’d brought a book into with me, but I kept opening it and then immediately losing interest. I was restless, looking around the cabin, unconsciously cataloguing all the ways this flight to Korea was different from the last one I’d taken there, and in some ways, how it was the same.

Once again, after having just quit my job, I was leaving the country to fly to Korea. The difference this time was that I already had a job lined up. I snorted quietly. It wasn’t lost on me that it was with ENT. Again.

Last time, I’d been flying first class. On this flight, on ENT’s dime, I was very much not in first class.

I looked out the window as we began to taxi down the runway, and I experienced that familiar feeling of anxiety as the engines spooled up. Despite how often I seemed to find myself in a plane, I didn’t like flying. Every time I heard the doors lock, I felt vaguely sick. It had not escaped my attention that I had just signed up to nearly a year of continuous flying.

The plane halted briefly, and then with a roar, began to power down the runway, picking up speed with a force that pushed me back into my seat. I clutched at the arm rest and swallowed hard as I felt the wheels tip up and then we were away, weightless.

Despite my fluttering pulse, I looked out the window as my last view of London began to shrink. The city limits gave way to the wider view of the surrounding countryside, and soon it was patchwork fields and sprawling towns as far as I could see, until it was all lost behind a bank of clouds. When I could no longer see below us, I leaned back in my seat and let out a breath.

When the seat belt sign turned off overhead, I grabbed my rucksack out from under my seat and pulled out some of the paperwork I’d brought with me so I could familiarise myself with the tour schedule and start plotting out my write-up schedule.

The tour was split into five legs: – Asia, the Americas, Oceania, Europe, the Middle East and then the Korean encores.

The first leg alone was mammoth. Fourteen performances spread over eight weeks, across six countries. What was wild was that I knew for a fact ENT had planned a far more scaled-back version of this tour. Half the amount of performances across a period of five, or six months, but the group had pushed back hard. I made a note to ask about that during my pre-tour interview and began plotting out the others I had scheduled along the way. It made sense to me to tell a gradient story, and not ask the same questions again, and again.

GVibes was in some ways a product of their own success when it came to interviews. So often, the interviews they gave – be it radio show, TV show, or magazine – were subject to strict rules about what could, and could not be asked, and often times the interviewer was so unused to coming up with original questions that didn’t involve gossip, or controversy that they fell back on the most basic, boring shit like, “what do you like to eat when you come to America?”

When I interviewed, I wanted to tell a story about the person, or group I was talking to, and personal history aside, that’s exactly what I wanted to do on this tour. I knew Vibers. Hell, I was a Viber. I knew what Vibers would want to know.

Falling into that mindset helped me regain some of my objectivity. I could never forget my past with the group – not without a lobotomy, I supposed – but I could be professional. I wanted to be.

This tour was about moving forward. Proving I deserved the life I’d worked for. The life I wanted.

So why couldn’t I stop replaying in my mind the last message Jihoon had sent me?

Why couldn’t I stop my mind from wondering why he hadn’t reached out when he, and the rest of the group had found out I was coming on tour? How did he feel about it, and why the hell did I care so much?

I threw my pen down and groaned, earning me a concerned look from the older lady sitting next to me.

“Joesonghapnida,” I said with an awkward expression.

Immediately, her expression changed from disapproval, to surprise.

“You speak Korean?” She asked me, in Korean.

“A little,” I replied.

“Your accent is good!” she enthused, and I smiled, nodding my head gratefully, and that was about all it took for the two of us to strike up the kind of friendship only two strangers on a plane could. She demanded to know why I was going to Korea. It wasn’t a secret, so I told her I was a journalist about to follow GVibes around the world on tour, which led us down a whole rabbit hole of me trying to explain what I would be doing, although she did know who GVibes were. She scolded me when I’d told her I’d briefly lived in Korea, but hadn’t made it out of Seoul. I’d agreed with her, and she’d patted my hand and told me, “next time you will.”

Moving on to emotionally-safer topics, she very enthusiastically told me how much of a fan her granddaughter was. Honestly, I just tried to keep up. While my Korean was pretty passable these days, there was a very big difference between a calm, classroom setting, or watching a K-Drama with subtitles and listening to an enthusiastic halmeoni on a plane talking quickly about her family. By the time my new friend had decided to pull her eyemask down to sleep, my brain had begun to ache.