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“Dump your entire life to follow a pop group around the world, casually climb a mountain in Japan with your ex–”

“Don’t think it qualified as a mountain,” I interrupted.

Becka carried on. “–go for waffles with a pop star, get kidnapped in Paris–”

“Not sure it actually counted as kidnapping–”

“–become part of an Interpol investigation,” she went on, ignoring me.

I barked out a laugh. “Becka! I don’t actually think that’s what’s happening.”

“My point is,” Becka said, winking at me, “getting back together with the ex who’s been ‘courting’ you for months is kinda not surprising.”

“Could you at least act a little shocked? Go on,” I cajoled, “just for my benefit. Let me know how it feels not to be so utterly predictable.”

“Holy shit, babes, you did what? No way, who could have seen this coming?” She replied in a mechanical voice, with absolutely no change to her facial expression.

“Atta girl,” I replied, giving her a thumbs up for effort. “That’s exactly how I’m going to react when one day Woojin turns up at your door.” I teased, just to see the way her face went from robotic to flustered.

“Anyway, so about your website,” she stammered, making me grin so wide my cheeks hurt.

When we got to Berlin, the tour coordinator informed me that Mr Yoon would be going back to his normal duties. With Hana still in French custody and the investigation having found no evidence anyone else was involved, ENT had decided the threat to my safety was low enough that a personal security guard wasn’t necessary. I’d tried to act out a tearful goodbye with him, but he’d refused to play along.

When we got to Berlin, I met up with Sihyeon in the lobby of the hotel we were staying in. Despite how nice it had been to have a room to myself, it was good to see her again. She looked tired. She’d been travelling since yesterday to get here. She didn’t offer to talk about whatever family emergency had taken her away from the tour, and I didn’t ask. We moved around each other in our room with the ease of two people who had shared a space for months, neither of us getting under the other’s feet. She was too tired to want to do anything for the rest of the day, whereas I went out with the rest of the team to shoot footage around the city for the docuseries. Well, I didn’t do anything of the sort, but it was fun to go around with them and watch, occasionally taking notes for my city-stop feature article. I still had to finish up my Paris piece. I’d been distracted, and I was getting behind. Again.

July 24th

“Joon!” I laughed incredulously. “You cannot be serious.”

“You don’t like it?” he asked in a neutral tone, holding up the simple, dove-grey satin gown.

I made an irritated noise in the back of my throat. “The dress is fine–you know what I mean! I cannot attend a movie premiere with you!”

“Yes, you can.”

I whined. “Joon…”

“Kaiya,” he said in a measured tone, laying the dress down on the bed. “You can. Other staff are coming. Half the style team is coming, most of the dancers–no one will notice.”

I’d snuck up here during lunch while the rest of the crew was in the hotel’s dining room, when Jihoon had ambushed me with a wild proposal about coming along to the Berlin premiere of a new superhero movie. Oh, and he’d bought me a dress for the occasion.

“Joon,” I sighed, feeling my resolve weakening.

“Ky,” he crooned, walking towards me, already reaching for me. “Please. Let me have this.”

“You can’t keep using that as a tactic,” I grumbled.

His face lit up with a smile, running his palms up my arms until he could cup my face in his hands. “Then I suppose I'll have to keep finding reasons for you to say yes.”

Holy hell. How was I supposed to say no to that?

Hours later

“Kaiya, you look lovely,” Sihyeon sighed for the tenth time. “I’m still mad I’m not going.”

I spun around, eyeing myself critically in the mirror. “I’m not sure I should be going either, honestly,” I said again.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’re lucky they had extra tickets for press.”