Page 108 of K-Pop Double Life

“He does,” I said.

And I reached out and took Sang-hoon’s hand.

My mother went very still. Then she made a sound I recognized from my childhood—the soft, involuntary ai-yah she made when she was overwhelmed and trying not to show it—and her eyes went bright. She looked at our joined hands, then at my face, then at Sang-hoon’s, and what she found there seemed to be exactly what she expected to find.

“I always knew,” she said, to no one in particular.

My father appeared in the hallway behind her. He took one look at the situation and the expression on his face did something complicated—pride wrestling with emotion, the way it always did when he was trying not to embarrass himself.

“See,” he said to my mother. “I told you.”

“You did,” she agreed.

“And I never argued with you.” He looked at me, then at Sang-hoon with the careful attention he gave to people he was deciding to trust. “Our son, the international star. We watched videos online. Paris, London, New York. You were amazing.”

“Come in, come in,” my mother said, already pulling us both inside. “I made all Joon-hi’s favorites. Sang-hoon, I know you love them too.”

She did know. She’d been feeding Sang-hoon at family events for four years, always noting what he finished and what he left, filing it away the way she filed away everything that mattered. My mother’s love was encyclopedic. It kept records.

The apartment felt smaller than I remembered, the way it always did when I’d been away. But also more itself, too. The shelves lined with photos, the good dishes brought out because I was coming, the specific weight of accumulated years that only existed in places where a family had actually lived.

I looked at the photos while my mother went to the kitchen. Me at fifteen outside the Starhouse building on my first day, skinny and terrified and trying to look like I wasn’t either. The debut showcase, where I’d worn a black shirt the stylists said made me look older. The first music show win, all five of us screaming, Min-kyu crying and trying to hide it.

And there was Sang-hoon in several of them, standing slightly to the side in the way that staff always stood. Present but positioned as background, part of the apparatus rather than the story.

He’d been there the whole time. In the frame, in the periphery, in every important moment of our time together.

I’d spent all that time not understanding that he felt for me what I felt for him.

Dinner was doenjang jjigae and japchae and the seasoned spinach I’d been eating since childhood, and the table was small enough that Sang-hoon’s knee pressed against mine under it throughout the meal. My mother served him before he could reach for anything himself. My father asked him about his work with a genuine curiosity that had nothing to do with managing a conversation and everything to do with actually wanting to know.

Sang-hoon answered carefully at first, the way he always did with new situations—watching, calibrating, figuring out the room. But my father had a way of making people feel accountable to their own honesty, and gradually I watched Sang-hoon relax into something more real. He talked about the tour, about the technical work of styling for stadium productions, about the differences between venues. My father listened the way he listened to everything, with his full attention, nodding at the right moments.

At some point my mother refilled Sang-hoon’s bowl without asking.

He looked startled. Then he looked at me.

I shrugged. Welcome to this.

My father’s terrible jokes were the same as always, and I laughed at them in the way I always had. Genuinely, despite myself, the laughter arriving before I could decide whether it was warranted. Sang-hoon laughed too, which made my father visibly pleased, which made my mother roll her eyes in the fond, practiced way she’d been rolling her eyes at my father for thirty years.

This was what I’d been afraid to give Sang-hoon. This ordinary thing.

I watched him across the table, being welcomed into something that couldn’t be unwelcomed. My parents had already decided. By the time dessert arrived—sliced fruit, because my mother believed in ending meals simply—Sang-hoon had become more than a stylist I had brought along for a meal, as I had so many times.

It felt like relief, but also like standing at the edge of something I wasn’t sure I’d be allowed to keep.

My father set down his fork and looked at me.

“Your mother and I have tickets for Tuesday night,” he said. “Front section, good seats. The company sent them.”

“I asked them to,” I said. “I wanted you there. To see the final show of the tour.”

“We’re so proud of you,” my mother said. Her eyes were wet. “Everything you’ve accomplished. Everything you’ve become.”

I wanted to tell them. The words were there—stay home, don’t come, I need you to be safe, someone wants to kill me and if you’re in that stadium and something goes wrong I will never⁠—

I couldn’t say any of it.