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In reality, we had only really been going a few weeks. We’d done six concerts over three stops. We were still very much at the beginning of the journey, and yet the constant motion of the tour was beginning to wear on me. It wasn’t so much the actual travelling – not yet. It was that I’d just begun to realise the full scope of the tour, as if I was preparing to be tired for the next few months, but if I felt this way, I wondered how the members were faring. They may be secretly superhuman, but even superhumans got tired.

I found myself watching them whenever I saw them, looking hints of fatigue. They were exhausted after the concerts, of course, but they never seemed to bring it into a normal day. They always seemed active, eager to be here and somehow just… normal.

Their lives were extraordinary, but they had chosen this and they were good at it. It was a very different realisation from seeing them be good at performing on a stage, or in an interview. This was like watching them be good at life. As if this was normal. As if any of this was normal. They made this extraordinary life look ordinary, and I wondered if for them, that was the only way they could get through each day without burning out.

Because the entire media and press team was using the week between Osaka and Singapore for filing our work, we were all permitted to request time to interview the group, subject to approval. Now that I’d loosened up around them, I had been hoping to get them to myself to talk about the fan interactions at the last three stops, but my request was – to my frustration – rejected.

I read the email response declining my request when it came in and slammed the laptop closed. The reason I’d been rejected was simple schedule pressure. I wasn’t deemed a priority. All I’d wanted was a brief window of time. Having to go through official channels, and then be rejected by those channels had reminded me of my place on the tour.

I guess I’d somehow assumed things had changed after Kyoto. That maybe because I had history with the group that I’d be granted greater access. Obviously that wasn’t the case – of course it wasn’t. We didn’t have history, we shared a secret. We could all be friendly to each other in passing, but what else had I expected? I was more angry at myself for the momentary lapse in judgement, because of course it wouldn’t change anything.

Nothing would.

I was pissy for the rest of the week, and I knew it. I tried to avoid people for the most part, because it was getting a little too busy in all the shared spaces, and it was irrationally irritating me.

Sihyeon was a wonderful roommate. She was never there, always off out with other members of the team or sightseeing, while I frankly preferred to either work in silence or wander around Osaka, just taking in the city while the chill wind cooled my overheated skin.

Tomorrow we flew to Singapore and I’d submitted my articles for the Korean and Japanese concerts this morning, but I was restless. I sat in a park, drinking a coffee, trying to enjoy the wide open space.

I pulled out my phone and brought up KakaoTalk. I scanned over the very brief messages we’d exchanged weeks ago in Seoul. My thumb hovered over the keyboard before I locked my phone and roughly shoved it back in my pocket. I’d done this half a dozen times already, repeatedly changing my mind, talking myself into it and then talking myself out of it. I kept telling myself the urge came from a place of professional curiosity, that maybe he would be able to arrange an interview. But what really pissed me off was that even I knew that was bollocks. Not only would that look absolutely terrible, it probably wouldn’t even work. Worst of all, it wasn’t even a good excuse to text him, and if I didn’t buy it, he wouldn’t buy it either. I shouldn’t want to text him in the first place.

I clenched my jaw and took a gulp of the coffee that had cooled past the point of enjoyment, but I was angry enough at myself to drink it anyway.

“Kaiya, you have to come,” Sihyeon insisted, crossing her arms as she hovered over where I sat on the bed, pretending to read a book.

“Why?” I said, glancing up at her.

“Because it’s a team meeting. You are part of the team.” she pointed out reasonably.

She was right. I knew I had to go. It wasn’t negotiable. We were all meant to video conference with ENT to review the docu-series and discuss if they wanted us to change our focus for the next half of this leg. A check-in meeting, essentially.

“God, fine,” I grumbled, tossing the book on the bed and swinging my legs over the side. Sihyeon shot me an encouraging look. She had been very cool about my mood this week, even if she had no idea why I was being so grumpy.

We made our way upstairs to one of the larger suites the managers were sharing. The rest of the team was already inside, crowded around the dining table they’d commandeered as a conference table. It wasn’t exactly the glamorous set up one might expect from one of Korea’s biggest entertainment companies, but it worked.

We checked in with Seoul first, discussing the media we’d sent them so far, and overall they were pleased. The PR lead went through our pieces and made suggestions, but when it came to mine, he surprised me by asking for more backstage coverage on the next leg. Apparently the pieces I’d written for the Korean concerts when I’d been backstage had worked well with the media team’s documentary footage, and they wanted more of that perspective for the next leg.

They wanted me to stay at crowd-level for Singapore, Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta, but then switch back for the North and South America stops to show the fan reaction from the group’s perspective.

I was quietly pleased with the request. I had been worried about how I could describe essentially the same concert experience across so many stops, and this gave me far more room to tell a story.

Next, the media team filming the footage for the documentary played us some of the sequences they’d put together so far. The point was for all of us to share our thoughts on the direction, because the PR team wanted to tell a story across all of our formats: the documentary, the blogs, the photos and the print. It was actually a really exciting project. Even if I was feeling a little belligerent at the moment.

The footage was still rough, and I watched with professional curiosity, until I began to notice some things that made me pause.

The camera crew had followed us all around for the past few weeks, so there was often a camera around wherever GVibes was. Frankly, I’d stopped noticing, which is probably why some of the footage took me by surprise. There were clips of the group and tour crew being shuttled from airports or on the coach, multiple venue shots and basic, behind-the-scenes stuff. I was visible in a couple of the clips. This in itself wasn’t extraordinary, given I was part of the team following them. A lot of us were milling about all over the place, and eventually our faces would be blurred out in the final cut.

The thing I noticed though, was that in all of the clips where both GVibes and I were in the same shot, Jihoon seemed to be standing in front of me. Not because I shouldn’t have been there, but possibly because he was aware of what some people might infer from an unknown woman being so close to the group. People had invented scandals out of less.

It was casual, and if you weren’t looking at me, you wouldn’t notice the way that his eyes shifted towards the camera, and then to me before he moved himself to block me. I hadn’t noticed at the time. I’d known he was there, of course. I’d always known, but I’d also been careful to never look directly at him. Not just for the cameras but also because it felt a little like he was the sun and looking for too long might hurt me.

Watching the way his body moved between me and the camera crew, it was hard to deny that it was deliberate. Once might have been an accident, twice and it could have been a coincidence, but three times? I swallowed hard as I watched the footage, suddenly conscious of my expression as I forced myself to keep it neutral. I stole looks at my team-mates, but no one seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. I felt like I was sitting in a spotlight.

Later, lying in bed, I ran through it again and again. It wasn’t unusual. The members often did it for female staffers, and honestly it was sad that they needed to. It was not uncommon for women on the crew to be targeted for no other reason than that they were a woman, and around the group. It wasn’t specific to GVibes. It wasn’t even specific to K-Pop. It was an industry-wide problem. It was normal now for all staff members to have their faces blurred out in post-production.

So no, it was normal for a member to stand in front of me, or anyone else. But it was Jihoon on every occasion. Like he’d seen me first. Like he’d been watching for me every time.

Chapter 16