This wasn’t ground-breaking information. I’d seen it first-hand, but even outside of the industry, it was a badly kept secret.
K-Pop was branded on marketability, and the fundamentals of that included the marketability of the performers themselves. It’s why some trainee idols went so long without ever being put into a group – if they ever were – because they needed to suit the role written for a new group on top of being ridiculously talented and, lets face it, above conventionally attractive. In short, every star needed to align.
“How did you get put into that role?” I asked with interest.
There were rumours, of course, but no one had ever told me the specific story. Even he had only alluded to Tae’s reputation, but he had seemed to take it as fact. Now I wondered…
Tae sighed, like he was exhausted. And maybe he was. His stage performance, while comparatively short at just under two hours, had been incredibly energetic.
“You ever do one thing, and it just… turns into your entire narrative?”
I laughed, but it was a dark, humourless sound.
“I kissed a K-Pop idol and the world wrote me off as a harlot for months.”
“Ah yeah.” He grinned. “You scarlet woman.”
I shrugged. “I always considered myself lucky that I was able to maintain my anonymity through it all. You lot aren’t so lucky.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said quickly, “I’m not complaining about my life, or what it took to get here. I think when you do this, when you really get into it, you need to reach a point where you make peace with playing a role. You need to be okay with compartmentalising who you are, and who you’re expected to be. I made peace with my role a long time ago. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to not be the man whore people think I am,” he smirked, but it was cold. “But my life is kinda awesome, and one day I’ll get to write my own script.”
I gave him a courtesy couple of beats, before – “While that is very poetic, it didn’t answer my question.”
He blinked. “What was your question?”
I scoffed. “You’re a terrible interviewee. I asked how you got your reputation.”
“Damn, Pom.” He leaned back on his hands. “You’re a cold, cold woman, you know that? Here I am, opening up about changing my narrative, and you’re backing me into corners with your interviewer magic.” He took a sip from his bottle and winked at me over the rim.
“I said it was very poetic!” I protested. “But we’re opening up here. I wanna know why everyone thinks you’re a fuckboy!”
He spluttered, coughing and laughing as he wiped his mouth. When he’d cleaned himself up, he shot me a speculative look.
“Tell you what. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “You should be so lucky.”
I rolled my eyes and was about to speak when he cut me off.
“What I meant was, I’ll tell you my dirty, little secret, if you tell me something real.”
I scowled. “Like what?”
He shrugged. “Tell me why you broke up with Jihoon.”
My abdomen twitched like I’d taken a blow to my midsection. Even after all this time. I’d gotten good at not showing it.
“Deal,” I said with more bravado than I felt. “Go.” I pointed at him with my bottle, and he sighed.
“It’s really not as dramatic as you think. When I was still a trainee, I was seeing someone. Another trainee.”
I whistled, and he nodded. While dating bans – more often disguised as morality, or breach of image clauses – were technically being phased out of most contracts, they were still common practice amongst trainees. And strictly enforced.
“We’d been together for nearly a year, when someone told the managers. We denied it, but they demanded to see her phone to look for ‘evidence’.” He put air quotes around the word as he smiled, and the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen.
“There wasn’t much to see, honestly. We were hardly ever allowed to use our phones, and we were pretty careful about deleting our convos, but she’d forgotten to delete the last couple of messages from me.”
