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“Kaiya, there are rumours.” She trailed off, biting the inside of her cheek like she wasn’t sure how much she should say. Then, with more conviction, she went on. “Not many, but there’s a pretty convincing narrative.”

I sat up, pulling my legs up beneath me as I tried to force my face into an expression that was calmer than I felt.

“Like what?”

“Your bracelet,” Sihyeon said, glancing down at my wrist as if she expected to see it there.

It wasn’t, of course. It was safely in its box inside my luggage. I’d also hastily insured it, once I’d found out how much it was worth. My mum hadn’t raised a fool.

“Not just that,” she went on. “You went to Busan last week, didn’t you?” It was posed as a question, but it was clear she already knew the answer.

“I have friends in Busan,” I said weakly. “The tour was on break. I went to visit them.” I kept talking as if the more rationalisations I threw at it, the more plausible the excuse would sound, but every word out of my mouth had the opposite effect.

“You used to work for ENT,” Sihyeon stated.

“Years ago.”

“Your social media.”

I frowned. “What about it?”

Sihyeon shrugged. “Nothing specific. Just some things that line up a little too closely. It raises questions.”

“Like what?” I demanded with a laugh, forcing my fingers to unclench.

Sihyeon sighed and turned her laptop around so I could see the screen. It was the picture of the cat from Kyoto. The one I’d made friends with halfway up Fushimi Inari.

“Okay? So? What’s a cat picture got to do with anything?”

She frowned at me, pursing her lips as she pulled out her phone, tapping at it for a moment before turning to face me. Same cat, except in this picture it was in my arms while I grinned down at it. The smile on my face now felt as frozen as the one in the photo.

That photo was on my social media. I’d posted it after Jihoon had sent it to me. Because he’d taken it.

I looked back at the laptop, my eyes trailing up the screen to the username above the photo, already knowing what I’d see there. His username.

“So?” I asked defensively. “There were hundreds of cats up there.”

“Kaiya,” she said in a deceptively calm tone. “That’s the same cat.”

“Maybe it is, but it’s not proof of what you’re implying. It’s just a cat!”

“Don’t be naïve, Kaiya,” she said with the first hints of frustration. “Don’t pretend this doesn’t look how it looks. It’s not about the cat, or the bracelet, or Busan.” Her voice rose with every listed occurrence. “It’s all of those things. Look, you don’t have to tell me anything, but don’t…” She paused, blew out a breath and then looked at me with something closer to sympathy. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. And be careful. Because if I can put this together, other people can too.”

I watched silently as the fight drained out of Sihyeon’s expression, leaving behind furrowed brows and an unhappy pinch to her lips.

“I am not saying any of this to catch you out, Kaiya,” she said, rubbing her forehead before dropping her hand into her lap. “I just –” Another sigh. “I am worried for you. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – in fact, I don’t want to know. I just do not want you to be blindsided.”

Sihyeon got to her feet, closed her laptop, and left the room, leaving me staring after her with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

As soon as the door shut, I threw myself across the room and reached for my laptop bag, yanking it out and roughly opening it.

With clumsy fingers, I scoured social media with a few choice keywords. It didn’t take long to see what Sihyeon had seen.

Pictures of me at the airport in Busan. We’d been discreet. There were no photos of us close together, or even looking remotely like we knew each other, but that hadn’t stopped people from recognising me, and speculating about my presence there.

I navigated away from the pictures and steeled myself to open my notifications, flinching away from my laptop as if the pop-up screen was going to smack me in the face.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought. Not good, but not enough to make me want to slam the laptop closed. There were hundreds of tags and comments, but after skimming them, very few were outright hostile, and it seemed like it was because not only was it public knowledge that I was covering the tour, but I was also known to be ‘one of them’.