Denny inserted himself in the space between Eunjae and Jiyeon. They stepped apart like repelled magnets. “That's enough canoodling,” he barked at them.
“Canoodling?”
“You heard me, Han Jiyeon! Now, pay attention. It's time for the mission brief.”
This mission brief was apparently Eunjae's responsibility. Denny communicated as much with his piercing glare. And so the events of the past few days were retold in full: his disastrous return to Emerald Entertainment, the penalty clause that could disband them, the future of Apollo still hanging in the balance.
“They were going to ship me back to Australia,” said Eunjae, stomach turning again at the mere thought, “but I ran away again. With help.”
“How could they do that to you? Don't they know how things are between you and your parents?” Jiyeon fumed. She leaned against the porch rail, face bare, hair tumbling down in slightly frizzy waves. Her shirt might have once been blue but had faded with repeat washing. She’d padded out in a pair of slides that obviously belonged to her father or brother. They looked like kayaks on her feet.
It was the most casual outfit Eunjae had ever seen Jiyeon wearing so far, but when he looked, he found it: the black band of a hair tie on her wrist, dotted with tiny red flowers. Her floral motif, alive and well.
She crossed her arms. “I’m glad you ran away.”
“Me too,” he replied, having realized he was staring.
“But you decided to run back here? To us?” Denny grinned at him. “Well, hey. That's pretty smart for a guy whose eyes were 75% empty when I first met him.”
“75%.”
“Give or take.”
“Where is that number coming from? Because his eyes were definitely not empty then, and they're not empty now —”
“There will be zero staring into his eyes in my presence, Yeonnie!”
“Uh, anyway,” Eunjae cut in, “the plan was to do a livestream once we were all in the same place. I thought that with enough pressure from the public, Emerald might at least agree to remove the clause from our contracts. But they've cut off our social media access. Even our personal accounts are off limits.”
“Take it to the actual press,” suggested Denny. “I know a guy.”
“We will, eventually. It would take time, though. More time than we wanted to lose. Ideally, we'd be doing this tonight. And on social media, we could reach fans everywhere, right away.”
“You want them on your side.”
He shrugged. “We belong to our fans.”
Eunjae didn't say it out loud, but he was afraid that Emerald would try to control the narrative. The longer he and his brothers took to tell their story, the more they risked the company telling it for them.
“Hmm.” Jiyeon turned away from them, pacing to the porch rail and tilting her face up to the evening sky. “How many followers do you guys have?” she asked Eunjae over her shoulder. “It doesn’t need to be exact.”
Eunjae wasn't sure. He rarely even used his Instagram account, posting mainly when they were traveling, and then of course once a month or so when Nami or Doyoung started prodding him to do it. “It’s in the millions. I’ll have to check to be sure. My older brothers have even more, though. Here, I can go ask.”
As it turned out, Eunjae had guessed correctly. Jaehwan and Kazu both had a mind-boggling number of followers. Combined, they had higher counts than all the younger brothers put together. Max had a surprising amount, himself; every surly remark on someone’s podcast, magazine editorial, or variety show only seemed to gain him another hundred devoted souls.
“Jungwoo’s gotten a lot more over the past month,” reported Nick. “Now he’s tied with Ari.”
“Gross. Why the hell does anyone want to follow him? His posts are so lame.‘Hey Sunshines, look at these raindrops on my window.’‘Here's my favorite line from Romeo and Juliet with clouds in the background.’”
“Seems like they got him too. The latest post on his Insta is exactly the same as ours.”
“That's what justice looks like, Jess,” Max was quick to retort.
Jiyeon tugged at the hair tie on her wrist, brow furrowed, her expression deeply pensive. “Do you have an official account that the whole group shares?”
“We do,” Kei confirmed. He read the number out loud. “That’s higher than what I remember. Must be all the theories people are posting about those stupid green squares that Emerald posted.”
“Hmm.”
