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“I’ll be back later,” he replied, standing up straight and running a hand through his hair. He looked at me one last time, groaned again, and walked across the suite to the door. I laughed, watching him go, even as my skin tingled from his frantic touches. Silence fell over the space once the door closed, and I sighed happily.

I considered my options for the day. It was rare that I had a day with absolutely nothing to do. I was on break from the tour and I had no outstanding assignments. The tour wasn’t even in the country. I was completely at my leisure. It was a seemingly perfect day.

In the end, I decided to go see Paris as she appeared in the Autumn. I got dressed and headed out. My first port of call was a patisserie not too far away and bought myself the biggest pistachio croissant I’d ever seen. I took a photo of myself as I walked down the road, trying to cram it in my mouth, and posted it to my socials. Then, I did the most obvious thing a person could do while visiting Paris. I bought a coffee and walked to the Champ de Mars to see the Eiffel Tower up close. I sat on a bench to drink my coffee and just absorbed the day. There was a brisk chill to the air that promised a coming winter, but not yet.

Dozens of people milled around, taking photos with the tower or just strolling past. No one paid me the slightest bit of attention, and I couldn’t help wondering how long Jihoon, or any of the others would get to sit here like this before someone noticed them. I wondered how often they got to just be normal people walking down the street. It definitely happened. In pretty much every stop, they had been able to walk around the cities. At least until someone noticed, and then a crowd seemed to appear from almost nowhere, bleeding out from the cracks between cars, buildings, other people until they had to leave.

“Limited freedom,” Minjae had called it once, and that seemed a pretty good description.

My phone chimed with an alert, and I looked down where it sat in my lap. I smiled, seeing the notification from Jihoon. A selfie with Lee from the front row of the show they were attending. I was about to respond when my smile slipped, as I noticed my notification bar was full. I pulled it down on my screen, seeing dozens – no, hundreds of notifications on my social media. I clicked on one at random. Surely my pistachio croissant wasn’t that viral?

The screen took a moment to load, and then –

“OH, FUCK!”

Chapter 48

Bile burned up my throat, and I slapped a hand over my mouth, swallowing thickly.

Right there, in front of the Eiffel Tower, coffee dripping from my spilled cup onto the bench, I almost vomited.

People were staring, I could feel them out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my phone, because right there, on full display and from angles I hadn’t even known existed, was a carousel of photos – all of me and Jihoon. And I was recognisable in every single one.

Dozens of photos from that day in Seoul when we’d kissed in the rain, dozens more from the Ball. Despite the mask I’d worn, when lined up side-by-side with my unmasked face in Myeongdong, they made it clear that the person Jihoon spun around the ballroom was me.

There were an inconceivable number of photos, and there was nothing subtle, or ambiguous about the message they painted. It was clear to see we had more history than colleagues, or even friends. There were even pictures taken directly from my own account – photos I’d taken from our balcony. People had previously claimed they proved that I had lived in the same building as the group. Now they were being used as evidence that Jihoon and I had lived together. Then there was the bathroom photo I’d posted, our toiletries and cosmetics lined up side-by-side. Someone had dug up an old picture Jihoon had taken on tour where several of the same products were visible in the background, and suddenly that was evidence too. They’d taken snapshots of my past and used them against us. Someone had gone into my photos and used them to create a public version of our private life.

There were even photos of us hugging in the street after he’d pulled me out of the taxi at Charles de Gaulle airport. I hadn’t even known that one existed.

Someone had always been watching, that much was clear.

Photo after photo from concerts, airports, blown-up images framed to capture moments where he and I had existed for mere seconds in the same space were being used to write a story that invited speculation. I’d spent years writing about the lives of other people, and now strangers were dissecting my facial expressions, and what’s worse was that they weren’t wrong. They had captured me loving him and were crucifying us for it.

The thing I’d dreaded every day for years had finally happened.

My skin prickled, my focus narrowed until all I could see was the small screen clamped in my cold hands.

I noticed something that somehow felt even more horrifying. Links to The Tabs were on every photo.

Hana.

I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t her anymore. I knew she’d been extradited back to Korea, but the last I’d heard, it hadn’t been decided if she would be detained by the Ministry of Justice pending prosecution. That update had come from Monsieur Lallouche before the handover to the Korean lawyer representing ENT. He’d said that Hana could ‘remain at liberty’. Was this what she’d done with her liberty?

Re-shares on the photos were in the thousands. I had been tagged prolifically, alongside Jihoon, ENT and the GVibes official account.

Spots danced in front of my eyes, and I squeezed them shut, concentrating on breathing in through my nose. When that didn’t work, I put my head between my knees and counted to ten. Three times.

When I felt able to raise my head, I pulled my phone towards me. My fingers shook almost too badly to slide the app away and bring up Joon’s number. I pressed ‘call’, but it didn’t even ring. Straight to voicemail.

I had enough presence of mind to realise that the fashion show was well under way, and his phone was likely off.

The knowledge of it didn’t help me when I felt so desperately untethered that I wasn’t sure I could get off the bench without collapsing.

My phone rang. I dropped it. My fingers were almost too numb to pick it up, but when I saw the name on the screen, I managed to swipe up to answer.

“Becka,” I moaned, hand fluttering uselessly in front of my mouth.

“Babes! Are you okay?” She sounded like she was running.