“Mum, why are you telling me this now?”
She reached out a hand and gently caressed my cheek, and I inhaled the smell of her gardenia hand lotion. She offered me a small smile.
“Because sometimes you don’t get the time you think you will, and you need to say some things while you can.”
“Mum,” I whined, feeling my face crumple.
She just smiled, running her thumb across my cheek.
Chapter 11
The week after Easter, all five members of GVibes recorded a message. It was the first broadcast they had done in weeks, and normally when they posted an update, they didn’t bother to announce it in advance. They simply uploaded it, fans got the notification, and that was that.
This time was different. The time and date were posted in advance across social media, and because of that, most people expected this to be the video where they announced the cancellation of the world tour.
It had been planned to start later in the year, and tickets had been scheduled to go on sale at the end of April. It seemed like their management had been holding off until the very last moment to make the decision, but globally nothing had improved. If anything, things had gotten worse.
Every day the media bombarded us with hospital statistics and…
A shudder ran through me.
I sat on my bed, laptop open, and tried to force all thoughts of recent infection figures aside.
The group had recorded the video earlier today. Originally, they were going to do a live, but according to Joon, it had been too upsetting, and their team were concerned the guys wouldn’t be able to keep it together when the audience’s comments started flooding the screen. So instead, they’d filmed a short segment that had then been broadcast on all their socials.
I didn’t need to watch, I already knew what would be said. I’d spoken to Jihoon very briefly this morning, after they’d finished taping. But I wanted to watch. It felt like a silent kind of support when I couldn’t be there, because I knew how difficult this decision had been on the five of them.
It wasn’t a long recording. They were clustered on a sofa in one of the bigger artist dorms owned by ENT. It wasn’t far from the ENT building in Gangnam. I’d never actually been there, as none of them lived there anymore, but the apartment was still reserved for them.
It was also a convenient backdrop to film in, because the interior was so well known, whereas filming in their personal homes came with the risk that anything out in the open could give away something about their private lives. The smallest thing could be used to identify where they lived. That had happened in the past. It was why the dorms were relatively plain in appearance.
Even if I hadn’t already known the content of the video, it would have been immediately clear that this broadcast was not a normal one. For one, no one was casually eating or drinking – which was a common tactic used in the industry to invite the audience to feel at ease with the performers. ‘Parasocial 101’, Hana used to call it, which always sounded a bit cynical to me.
Refocusing on the screen, I watched as Minjae took the reins and did most of the talking, while the others nodded along, occasionally adding comments here and there. They began with how they’d decided to isolate together.
Korea wasn’t implementing a national lockdown, but they’d decided that to keep themselves, and the vast array of people they worked alongside, safe by isolating together for the time being.
There was a pause, and I watched as the automatic smiles they kept on started to slip.
Minjae began to speak, but as he was speaking in Korean, I had to rely on the subtitles to understand what he was saying. My Korean lessons hadn’t yet granted me conversational fluency. If they ever would.
The subtitles completely missed the emotional weight of the words. The plain black text unable to convey the sadness, the missed moments and the efforts now gone to waste as they relayed the information that the world tour had been formally cancelled.
However, Minjae’s voice – normally so steady, wobbled slightly as he delivered the words. I saw Seokmin rub his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, making no effort to hide his emotion. I saw Sungmin put an arm around his shoulders, and even though Woojin kept his stoic expression, there was a darkness to him.
Joon was sat on the ground beside Jae, his arms wrapped around his knees while he stared off into the middle distance. My heart ached for him. For all of them.
So much had gone into this, so much effort no one would ever see, or hear; the late nights in the studio re-recording vocals and whole tracks just for the tour, learning new choreographybecause the size of the stages required adjustment be made. All of it like re-learning a language, in a way. To say nothing of the work no one would ever know about. The set designs, the sound engineering, the outfit designs and creations, the back-up dancers, the logistics coordination, the travel plans… it had been an epic, incredible, Goliath sized undertaking and now it was… gone.
The world had paused, but the inertia of things already put in motion had crashed into a wall, and we were all supposed to act as if none of it had happened.
Minjae and Woojin began talking, almost as if they’d forgotten the cameras were there. They were discussing how terrible they felt for the fans who they’d not been able to see en masse for so long.
That was true; the last few performances had been small, niche occasions. So many of their performances had been scaled back in anticipation of the tour.
It had been a bit of an unspoken acknowledgement among Vibers that this would have been their last tour of any real size before they announced their enlistment schedule – the mandatory period of at least 18 months spent in South Korea’s military service that all eligible South Korean men had to undertake.
Jihoon and I hadn’t discussed his enlistment in great detail. It had been a sore point after the time it had been used to extend the period of time where he would remain publicly single, while keeping our relationship a secret. ‘The War of Eleven Years’ I’d privately dubbed it.
