They’ve been over this already, but he has yet to be convinced that her logic was sound. As usual with Denny, the righteous indignation might just burn eternal.
“What if you're wrong? What if it doesn't die down?”
“It will. Right now everyone wants to know why the livestream was posted from my account, but soon enough they'll stop asking. I just have to wait it out. Disappear again.”
“That won't work a second time!”
But it might. All she has to do is stay resolutely out of the picture. The world wants Apollo, not Emma Han, for all the intrigue she's stirred up. The resurrection of her dead social media platform is only fascinating because it’s linked to the boys.
“Plus,” Denny continues, warming up to a full blown monologue, “it's not just about you anymore. Even if you never touch Instagram again, you've gotten yourself caught up in all this nonsense. Apollo’s so famous that it's stupid. Their fans are freaking manic, okay? I’ve done the research and I need you to understand how bad this could get. It's potentially very, very, very, very bad. Ten times worse than how it was before. Especially if you keep doing stuff like coming back into the madhouse after I tried to send you out of it.”
Jiyeon has no regrets about turning back instead of heading home. She hadn’t dared to come close enough for a view of the stage, but she could hear Eunjae’s voice when he spoke to the crowd, and she’d known from his voice that he’d won.
Denny shifts in his seat, arms crossed, staring straight ahead. “I never want to see you go through that again. I thought you were done with it.”
“I am,” Jiyeon insists. “This doesn't mean I'm going back to that life. It was just… something I had to do. I had to help, Den.”
His shoulders go slack, the tension giving way to empathy. “Yeah, Yeonnie. I know.”
“It's already been reported that my family owns a restaurant in the same shopping center where the event was held,” she reminds him. “No one wants to believe this was just a coincidence, but they'll have to accept it eventually.”
“Why accept it when they could just keep digging?”
Jiyeon sets her drink down in the cup holder. There is movement up ahead, figures progressing from the resort in the distance and down the deserted beach at a leisurely pace. Voices drift on the sea breeze, punctuated by laughter and raucous cheering.
“They can dig if they want to, then,” she says. “There won't be anything for them to find.”
“You only need to be caught with Ryan one time —”
“Caught doing what? We can't be caught if we stay away from each other from now on.”
“You're gonna stay away from him.”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s gonna stay away from you.”
“Uh-huh.”
Denny's laughter thunders through the van’s interior like the first rumbles of an impending rockslide. He checks his watch, then pulls the key out of the ignition. “That,” he declares, swiveling around to face her, “is complete horsefeathers.”
“Horsefeathers?”
“You know what I mean!”
“I really don't!”
Shaking with mirth, Denny says, “Oh, man. Jesus, noona. Good luck.” Then he tosses her the keys, still chuckling darkly, and climbs out of the van. “Drive it back to the pier when you're done. I'll meet you there. Ryan Kim can walk back to the hotel with his eight million brothers.”
Directives issued, Denny departs from the scene. Jiyeon blinks and her brother has disappeared among the dunes. Not even a full five minutes later, Eunjae takes his place.
They move quickly. He goes for the final row, easing himself into the shadows while Jiyeon slides the door shut in his wake. The parking lot remains as it was, this end of the beach still devoid of the usual evening crowd. She feels certain no one has seen. Even so, the pair of them sit in silence for a while, half expecting to be chased out of the vehicle at any second.
Nothing happens. No cameras flash and no wild-eyed Apollo fans come crawling out of the clumps of swaying seagrass to challenge Jiyeon to a duel. She exhales the breath she's been holding and says, “Well. That was more stressful than I thought it would be.”
“I think we're good. None of my brothers followed me here.”
“That's your number one concern?”
