“Scrubs,” said Eunjae.
“Yeah! Scrubs!”
Jiyeon frowned. “But why can’t you do it?”
“Won’t have time. Filming starts in January, and we’ll probably be promoting for the next album then. Hyungs are waiting to enlist so we can have eight, even if Jaehwan-hyung will still be gone.” Stepping over a puddle, he said, “We’re worth a lot less when we’re not a full set, noona. We’re like toys you collect. So I have to pass, but I'm glad they thought of me.”
Eunjae paused the recording, dismayed. “We could try and negotiate that. You should’ve said something.”
“For what, hyung? Maybe Jungwoo doesn’t care if people are secretly mad at him, but I care. I need all of you to keep liking me or I won’t have a place to live when I’m old. But anyway! What did you ask me, noona? If this was my dream?”
And Jesse went on, telling the story of how he was scouted while competing on a quiz show, and how he dreamed of making his grandmother proud. He loved nothing more than to talk about his beloved granny, but Jesse’s steps were just a touch too buoyant, and his voice was just a bit too bright.
Eunjae heard regret there, layered beneath forced optimism. It chilled him more than the knowledge of Prism following them across the sea.
33
Jiyeonwaitedbehindapillar while her boyfriend posed for photos with seven brothers in identical lavender suits. Eight brothers, if you counted the cardboard cutout of Apollo’s leader, Jaehwan. He’d been edited into a matching ensemble at the bride’s request.
“Well, he’s not dressed like the groom,” she said. “That might have been confusing.”
Denny lurked at her elbow, draped in black, a living bulwark with arms and legs and a lavender silk tie. His presence kept taking fellow wedding guests by surprise. Some shrieked in terror, much like Jesse when Cardboard Jaehwan came swanning out of the ballroom without warning. Even now, he’d positioned himself as far away from leader-hyung as possible.
Standing next to Denny was a foolproof way of determining which guests were related to Kazu. The whole family had developed an immunity, not even blinking when the guys introduced him as their manager. Jiyeon could see why.Similar hulking figures could be found everywhere she looked, variations of her brother copied and pasted throughout the wedding venue. They monitored from dim corners and guarded critical access points. They patrolled the corridors and carried Apollo’s puppy in a bespoke sling provided by Vuitton.
Denny had strong opinions about this sling. He also objected to letting Daisy attend a formal event. Or did they change the dog’s name to Anastasia? Jiyeon almost asked, but then her brother grumbled, “These jokers were late for rehearsal, and they’ll be late for the performance, too. I needed them in that ballroom seven minutes ago.”
“It’s still early. I bet we’ve got at least half an hour.” After the ceremony, guests had been funneled straight to cocktails in an adjoining lounge. Not everyone had made it over to the ballroom yet. “Let them do one more before you barge in."
“Do the math, Yeonnie. They take three steps and somebody asks for a picture. At this rate, it’ll be another hour to get from here to the table.”
“Not if they’re running. You know they’ll run if they think you’re mad.”
He gave a disgruntled huff. “I’m not mad at them. They’re not the ones giving out exclusive merch at the shop this weekend, of all weekends. It’ll be a bloodbath, and I won’t be there to barricade the doors in person. I wish Jeannie would torch every box like I asked.”
“Mom and Dad wouldn't let her. You know they want to make the fans feel like they’re welcome, ‘cause they love Apollo, so it’s no use fighting it.” Resting a hand on Denny’s arm, Jiyeon added, “You were right, when you said it’ll be over soon. Let’s just ride it out.”
She said this despite the fact that being here, attending this wedding, was the opposite of ‘just riding it out.’ Jiyeon understood that Eric came to Tokyo because they'd provokedhim. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t heard from Prism since her plane touched down. She knew they were watching.
Denny issued a moratorium on photo ops and began herding the guys into the ballroom. Jiyeon went with them, trying not to think about Prism, or Leila, or Arthur. She wanted to be free of her problems for just this one fleeting weekend, at least. Why did it feel like she was asking for too much?
Bridesmaids flocked past her, trailed by waitstaff pushing trolleys. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling glimmered with stars. The ballroom was an enchanted woodland divided into four quadrants, each themed to a different season. Pillars became trees bursting with green leaves or shedding drifts of pink blossoms, tiny crystal shards trembling from each bough. The dance floor shimmered like ice under moonlight. This provided a gorgeous backdrop for the next three photo ops, since Eunjae and his brothers didn’t like to say no.
Cardboard Jaehwan remained in the hall to greet guests as they came in. The rest of Apollo fell into seamless formation every time someone requested a picture, always leaving a spot between Kazu and Nicky. It was the space they saved for Jaehwan automatically, muscle memory, even though he’d been gone since April. They felt his absence like a phantom limb. And this wasn’t limited to their leader; when Kazu and Kei flew out first, two place settings appeared in front of their chairs at dinner, same as ever.
“Are they really okay?” she’d asked Denny, when he met her at the airport. Maybe the faint undercurrent of tension was a figment of Jiyeon’s imagination. She hoped so. But weren’t they joking even more than usual? And weren’t they dodging the topic of Jungwoo’s offer from Emerald, treating it like a tender bruise?
“They have to be okay,” was her brother’s curt response. “Even if he doesn’t leave, they can’t be together forever. They’renine different people. Sooner or later, they’ll have to live nine different lives. I keep saying this ‘cause they need to hear it.”
And yet:We’re worth a lot less when we’re not a full set, noona. We’re like toys you collect.
Suddenly, she couldn’t watch anymore. Jiyeon slipped away to find her seat at one of the two tables allotted to Apollo. The napkins were folded into lilies, and the centerpiece was made of real branches painted silver, as if rimed with a thin sheen of frost. She took pictures for her parents and Jeannie. Absorbed in documenting the decor, she was slow to register that someone had taken the adjacent chair.
Fingers walked up Jiyeon’s arm, tipped with long, flawlessly manicured nails. “Who left you all alone, unnie?”
She’d seen the movie posters, taped to the fridge and on random walls at each of Apollo’s temporary residences last summer. These posters reappeared within hours of being ripped to shreds, as if by magic, so Jiyeon had come to know Hazel’s face very well. She had the kind of beauty that stunned on impact. It hit like an uppercut to the jaw, no holds barred. But there was also a softness to her features, something warmer and more welcoming than Max’s good looks at first glance. His beauty was built on precise angles, sharp as cut glass.
Jiyeon tried to tell her that it was fine to skip formalities. Why call her 'unnie' when she wasn't that much older? But Hazel waved this away. “Of course that's what I'm calling you. I don't need it getting back to my manager that I wasn't properly respectful. She'd nag me forever."
