Back at the hotel, I’m alone with my thoughts until an email from Yesterly and Havings comes through. It’s to all staff, congratulating Brittany on her nomination for a prestigious excellence award, the one I hoped they would select me for.
I wait for the fury to come. It doesn’t. It stings but it doesn’t burn.
Another email comes in, this time from Luxe. Ines has found someone to take on the role she offered me, so no need to worry.
I get into bed and pull the duvet over my head. My entire body feels empty, and for the first time, work isn’t there to soothe me. A loudspeaker squawks outside my window, and when a peppy song starts to play, I peer out of my blanket cave, wondering what it is. Alex would know. I should have had him take me on a musical tour of the city to experience K-pop myself instead of learning it from a computer screen.
A musical tour of the city. Ideas start to flow as I consider how this could look.
Excited, I sit up and start to make some notes. Slowly, without me noticing, anything to do with Yesterly and Havings drifts quietly to the back of my mind.
“Water,” rasps Alex, hanging in my doorway with an ashen face. “I beg you. Coffee.”
I give a weak wave toward the coffeemaker on the desk, and he stumbles in.
“That was…” I pause as I try to force my lethargic brain into thinking while controlling my nausea. “Intense.”
The last day working with Newlight had passed without incident. Then they took us out to say goodbye.
I was unprepared.
The night had started well, at a BBQ place familiar to me from the ones Hana and I go to in Koreatown, with a little vented brazier on the table to cook the meat. I nibbled on some fried tofu and drank the first of what would be many drinks.
So many drinks. I texted Jihoon before we left, and he warned me it would be a long night. I didn’t realize how long.
“They must have iron livers,” says Alex now with deep respect.
After dinner, we went to the noraebang for karaoke and more drinking. Thank God I’d had the foresight to turn off my phone, which saved me the dread of one of the Newlight staff seeing a text from Jihoon and the more dominant fear of sending him an incredibly bad booty call message.
Makeup sex rocks, but I’m trying to be classy here.
Clutching our coffees, we go to Alex’s room so he can finish packing. He struggles as he lifts his bag to check the weight. “Who would have guessed souvenirs were so heavy?” he says.
“You bought StarLune snow globes for your team and the convenience store’s entire stock of spicy dried squid snacks for Ben.”
“Worth it.” Alex’s face brightens as it always does when someone says his husband’s name. “He loves those snacks and they’re impossible to find at home. Did you see where I put the honey butter chips?”
“We ate them last night when we got back to the hotel.”
Alex glances into the trash, which contains the empty, crackly evidence of our drunken cravings. “Shoot. We ate the crab chips, too.”
Alex finishes packing, and we go out for lunch. Hyesu had recommended haejangguk, which is apparently a hangover-curing soup, so we get that for Alex and sundubu jjigae for me.
“Are you happy with the week?” I ask, picking up the wide metal spoon when the food comes. The rich smell of the soft tofu stew makes me feel better already.
“I didn’t get together with an idol like some people, but it was productive.” He ignores the look I give him and eats some banchan. “I got tons of content for my podcast, too.”
Alex runs a music history podcast on the side. This seems like a good segue to my musical tour idea.
“I was thinking about your podcast,” I say, all faux casual, no big deal. “What do you think about running music history tours?”
“What, in Toronto?” He sounds doubtful, and I try to not take it negatively.
“No, like you take a bunch of like-minded nerds on a music history tour in London or LA or whatever. Luxe does the planning. You host.”
There’s a long pause. “Do you have my phone tapped?”
“Why? You like it?”
