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Minjae had been furious, apparently, although Jihoon had been quick to reassure me that he was angry at the situation – the timing – not at us. I couldn’t help but suspect it was probably a little of both, and fairly so. He was the group’s leader, so he would feel responsible for shielding them from this scandal.

Woojin had been less than diplomatic, Jihoon said with a wry smile. Called us both idiots, but had some worse sentiments for Hana, and all the publications who had chosen to run with the story.

Ace and Lee had apparently just wanted to know if I was alright. Ace had sent me several messages since we’d been back. Telling me not to worry, and to make sure I was eating well.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry. I’d spent so long worrying about this exact scenario. Not just this time, but for years, really, and here we were, and I was being asked if I had remembered to eat breakfast.

In the end, I laughed and cried.

Later, all the members were taken away for concert preparations. Busan represented the group’s triumphant return to Korea, and the concerts had been altered ever-so-slightly to change up the running order. There would be live musicians accompanying them with traditional Korean instruments for some tracks, so they needed to run it all through as though it was a whole new performance. I was looking forward to watching it.

It felt a little like we were pretending as we eventually rolled out of bed and prepared to do normal things, but it felt even weirder to try to act any other way. How were you supposed to act when your life had imploded? I couldn’t hide under the bed. Jihoon had a concert to prepare for and I? I would get dressed.

He was going to be gone for most of the day, but I would be staying in the hotel.

We’d spoken briefly to the security team and managers. They said that I was free to come and go as I pleased, but it would be at my own risk. Unlike in Paris – the first time – I would not be assigned a security team. That time had been because of a perceived risk to my safety due to my association with ENT. This… this was a little more nuanced. ENT would not assign me security just because I’d been outed as Jihoon’s girlfriend. As far as they were concerned, their responsibility was to the safety of their artists, not their personal relationships. Basically, ENT wanted no part in this, which was a bit cut-throat, but I understood.

The one begrudging concession they’d made was that I could stay in this hotel, instead of moving to the one previously arranged for me, as a part of my role as tour staff. No one said, ‘in Jihoon’s room’, but they also didn’t offer to book me a separate one. In another world I might have been horrified to have my love life reduced to a security arrangement, but we weren’t in that world anymore.

Jihoon had gotten angry and offered to arrange private security for me, but I’d decided to make everyone’s life easier and just stay in the hotel.

“I have work to do anyway,” I’d said with a shrug.

“You should not have to live like a prisoner,” he’d ground out, cupping my cheeks, tilting my face up to hold my gaze, and scanning my eyes as if searching for blame. He would find none.

“Most prisons don’t have jacuzzi tubs in the bathroom, and caviar on the room service menu. Or room service, generally.” I said thoughtfully.

He grumbled around a half-smile.

“Funny girl,” he muttered, pressing his forehead against mine, and I felt the apology in each word he didn’t say.

Once he’d left to meet with the other members at the stadium, I’d gathered my courage and sat at the desk and opened my laptop. I had a cup of coffee next to me for courage, and a pistachio pastry for, well, not courage, but I considered sugar medicinal in this instance.

For a while, I resisted the urge to stray from my typed-up notes and open Word document, and my discipline served me well for a couple of hours. I was a good way into my Dubai write-up before I decided to get it over with.

Becka had been managing my accounts, so when I opened my emails, there was nothing there that shouldn’t be. I slumped in my chair, laughing at myself.

“Should have got her to manage my inbox months ago,” I muttered, impressed by the organisation. I had folders now, neatly dated and labelled.

There were a few emails there I made a note to respond to, but my adrenaline levels had settled enough that I considered myself calm enough to face the firing squad.

I tensed as I opened my social media, not quite sure what I was expecting, but again, I was met with a remarkably sanitised page.

Earlier today, when I’d first switched my phone back on to let Becka know I was going to tentatively rejoin the digital world, she’d sent me a brief list of things she’d actioned so I wouldn’t have to – including filtering my direct messages for certain keywords, and turning off comments on my posts. This was a temporary measure, she’d noted, just until everything died down. So, because of Becka organising my online presence, my notifications were by-and-large anti-climactic. No pitchforks, no death-threats. Or, at least, none that had slipped past the filters.

I laughed shakily, dropping my suddenly-too-heavy head into my hands. I sat like that for a moment, torn somewhere between nervous anxiety and relief, and I hoped fervently that I wouldn’t need to keep ripping this band-aid off.

But I couldn’t let that be it. I couldn’t carry on like nothing was happening outside our carefully-managed bubble. I promised myself I would only take a quick look, just to see.

It didn’t take long to find what I was expecting. Photos of us were everywhere, from personal accounts to celebrity gossip accounts, all saying the same thing. Jihoon had a girlfriend, and I had been identified. Not just as Kaiya Thompson, music journalist, but as Kaiya Thompson, tour crew, former intern at ENT, and even as far back as Pisces.

There, in black and white, were the bones of my entire professional life, being picked apart in the comments.

Most posts used the same attention-grabbing photos of Jihoon and I in the rain, faces inches apart, or kissing, eyes-closed and oblivious to the world we were in, but some had used bits and pieces rearranged to create a Frankenstein’s monster of evidence. Fragments of stills from videos – like the movie premiere in Berlin, where someone had zoomed in on my wrist, wearing the Auriga bracelet. People crowed, claiming they’d suspected ever since that day.

There was too much to take in. Vibers had done some serious leg work. Jihoon’s ring that he hadn’t taken off for weeks, my bracelet, my previous review of Reset, my interviews, Jihoon’s timeline in LA in 2019, my employment at ENT… it was an incredible level of detail, and the more I read, the more I could see there was no denying it at this point. It was like watching a train derailing.

Again and again, my life had been deconstructed and pieced back together in so many variations that it looked less like me and more like whoever they needed me to be.