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“What did you say to my wife? Why is her face clashing with her new hair?”

“Pair of cheeky buggers!” Mum’s voice called faintly, and I laughed.

“Hey pops!” I grinned, watching as he moved around the house, glimpsing the familiar background of their home in Cumbria. Seeing it always made me feel nostalgic, no matter where in the world I was.

“‘Ello, poppet,” he said cheerily, “where are you now?”

“She’s in Canada, she’s already told us that,” Mum called from the background, just as I opened my mouth to reply.

“Toronto,” I confirmed.

“Blimey,” he said, eyebrows shooting up. “Do you actually get to see any of these places you’re passing through?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” I admitted. “It’s so busy all the time, and not even just with the concerts. I feel like I’m tired all the time,” I huffed, dragging a hand down my face. “But I do make time to get out and have a look about. Buy souvenirs.” I grinned at him.

“Yes, about that,” he said lightly, “I think we’ve got enough fridge magnets, kid. Maybe you could graduate to, oh, I don’t know, some local snacks, or a nice, regional bottle of wine?”

I laughed, just as I laughed every time I mailed a new fridge magnet home from every city we stopped in.

“I don’t know about shipping home wine,” I warned, “but I can probably send you some snacks.”

“Don’t you dare!” Mum called from the background, making my dad wave his hand at her, and wink at me. “Just between us,” he whispered, and I laughed.

Two days later, and after a lot of faffing about with the managers, I somehow managed to arrange a day out with GVibes in what felt like a stunning coup.

Well, not really a day. Barely a couple of hours, but for all the effort it took it might as well have been a full week.

I already had a scheduled interview with them, but admitting to my dad that I hardly got to see the places we visited had stung, and I wanted to use the time a little… differently.

“Where are we going, noona?” Ace asked me, leaning over my seat where he sat behind me on the minibus.

“You’ll see,” I said mysteriously with a small smile.

The first concert in Toronto was in a couple of days, so this trip had needed to be shoehorned into their schedule, and because of the location, it had to be after-hours so we didn’t clash with the general public. Once we pulled up into the parking lot, it became impossible to conceal my plans.

“An aquarium?” Minjae twisted round in his seat a few rows ahead to look back at me. Jihoon stuck his head up above his seat and grinned widely, and I wondered if he was remembering the time we’d gone to the Lotte World Aquarium in Seoul. Did he still have the little axolotl plushy I’d insisted on buying him?

As we parked up close to the entrance, I got up and stood at the front of the bus.

“I thought this would be more interesting than sitting in a room with me asking you a bunch of boring questions,” I said, ducking my head to avoid the weight of five sets of eyes on me all at once.

There was a beat of silence, and then some excited noises coming predictably from Lee, and Ace, who both shoved up out of their seats to get to the front of the bus.

“Can we go now?” Ace asked, bouncing on his heels.

I looked over my shoulder to Youngsoo, who was on the phone. He held up a finger, made some indecipherable noises to whoever was on the call before turning, hanging up and moving over to slide open the door.

“Let’s go,” he said in a tone that implied he’d rather be chewing glass than supervising our little outing.

Ace and Lee all-but rolled out of the minibus, falling over each other to be first off the bus, followed by Woojin, who cuffed them both upside the head when they knocked into him. Then came Minjae, who muttered a quiet, “Good idea, Kaiya,” as he stepped down off the bus. It wasn’t much, but from him, it felt like a standing ovation.

I turned to see Jihoon with his hands in his pockets, watching me as if he was trying to figure something out.

“What?” I said, shifting under the weight of his gaze.

He shrugged, looking down at his feet for a moment. “Sometimes I look at you, and I see you as the girl you were. And then I blink, and you are different.”

The words hit me somewhere in my chest. It was an effort to remain still.