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Chapter Seventeen
Aria
January in Seoul was a frost-bitten blur of early mornings and late nights. The Han River bridges sparkled under pale lights, breath clouding the air the moment she left the car, and the sharp scent of street food mixed with exhaust followed her into the studio.
Inside the vocal booth, the world narrowed to headphones, glass walls, and producers watching quietly from the control room. The new album was slowly taking shape—darker verses laced with fractured trust, glittering choruses that dressed up the pain. She told herself every raw edge in her voice was intentional. Artistic. Not the heavier ache that settled in whenever she let herself think about the unread messages from Min-Jae still sitting in her notifications.
Lena kept her anchored. Fresh iced americanos appeared exactly when her throat burned. Timers reminded her to rest. Late-night ramyeon arrived without being asked. “You’re killing that bridge,” Lena would say, sliding a protein bar across theconsole, “but if you live on nothing but noodles, I’m calling in reinforcements.”
Aria would laugh, grateful for the normalcy, and Lena would add casually, “Jax texted again. Said the car feels alive and you’re hotter than any podium finish.”
The messages came steadily—short, warm, pulling her out of her own head.
Simulator day 3. Car is awake.
Your last studio story looked intense… and unfairly hot. Call when you surface?
She replied in fragments: husky voice notes between takes, blurry photos of lyric sheets marked with red corrections, selfies of midnight ramyeon with steam curling above chopsticks. Each exchange felt dangerously easy. Domestic. Like something real instead of borrowed time.
She caught herself smiling at her phone more than once, then shoved it away like it might burn her. This was still the arrangement. Good optics for him, a convincing distraction for her while she worked on the album that would finally make Min-Jae see what he’d lost.
One afternoon, halfway through recording the lead single, the confusion hit.
She’d written the original lyrics months ago—sharp, aching lines about betrayal and the sting of being left behind. They were meant to be her break-up anthem, the emotional core of an album designed to reach him. But every time she stepped back into the booth, the words kept shifting.
A line about “the way you walked away without looking back” became “the way the silence felt heavier than goodbye.”
A verse that once blamed cold distance now carried an undercurrent of warmth she hadn’t intended—quiet mornings, steady hands, laughter that lingered longer than it should.
She frowned at the page, pen hovering. Why does it keep changing? The producers loved the new versions, said they felt more honest, more layered. But the shift unsettled her. For a fleeting second she wondered if the songs were quietly rewriting themselves around someone else—around sunlit waves in Brisbane, around Jax’s low laugh in the dark, around the way he looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered.
The thought sent a jolt through her chest.
No. She shook her head, pressing her lips together. These were still songs for Min-Jae. A break-up album wrapped in enough beauty to make him regret walking away. The changes were just… artistic growth. The studio atmosphere bleeding in. Nothing more. She couldn’t let herself question it.
She took a slow breath, adjusted her headphones, and sang the revised bridge again—pouring every ounce of conviction into making the words fit the story she still needed to believe.
Late January came faster than expected. She boarded the private jet to London on a Thursday evening, camel coat buttoned high against the cold, and let the long flight blur the studio days behind her.
Heathrow greeted her with freezing fog and sideways rain. A black Range Rover waited, heater blasting. Jax’s texts lit up her phone the moment she slid into the back seat.
Just finished final debrief. Car looks like a weapon. You landed?
VIP entrance, 7 sharp. Bring the green dress. I like how it moves when you walk.
The words sent a low, familiar heat curling through her belly. She remembered the first time she’d worn that emerald gown—the night they met in Singapore. Now the memory carried new weight: Brisbane nights, slow kisses by the pool, the way his hands had learned every curve of her.
She sent back a single winking emoji and watched rain-streaked London slide past the window.
The day dissolved into preparation—hair and makeup in the hotel suite, stylists fussing over the gown, a quiet vocal warm-up in the marble bathroom because the single’s new bridge still wouldn’t leave her head. By six-thirty she was ready: emerald silk hugging every line, high slit flashing with each step, diamonds catching the light like ice.
When she stepped onto the red carpet and saw Jax waiting, everything else faded.
Jax
He’d been at the factory since dawn—simulator runs, sponsor meetings, endless tweaks—but the moment she emerged from the car in that emerald gown, the rest of the day vanished.
