Chapter 12: The Arranged Love
The phone buzzed against the polished floor like a trapped insect. Min-ho watched it skitter in tiny, frantic circles, the screen flashing with a relentless parade of names: Director, Jae-Hyun, Public Relations Head, Director again. He let it ring until it died. Silence reclaimed the practice room for exactly eight seconds before it started again.
This time, he answered. It was Jae-Hyun. His voice was a compressed hiss of static. “The conference room. Now. Do not speak to anyone. Do not look at anyone.”
The walk through the company halls felt like wading through syrup. Staff members glanced away as he passed, their expressions a mixture of awe and terror. The “Apeum” track was a wildfire in the closed ecosystem of Korean entertainment, a raw, screaming breach of protocol that was both condemned and secretly devoured. The lyrics were already being dissected on every forum, every connection to a certain Argentine singer laid bare with forensic intensity.
The executive conference room was colder than he remembered. Four men sat on one side of the vast glass table. Jae-Hyun stood near the window, his back to the stunning, indifferent view of Seoul. The Director, the same one from two years prior, did not gesture for Min-ho to sit.
“You have set fire to a billion-won brand,” the Director began, his voice dangerously quiet. “You uploaded a personal, emotional... tantrum, to a public platform, with zero clearance. After explicit instructions. Do you understand the contempt this shows?”
Min-ho stood at parade rest, hands loose at his sides. “I understand.”
“You understand nothing!” Another executive, younger, with sharp glasses, slammed a tablet on the table. “We have sponsors calling. The narrative is chaos. Is this a mental health cry? A coming out? A protest against the company? We look weak. We look like we cannot control our own artists.”
“The track is good,” Min-ho said flatly. “The fans are connecting with it. Streaming numbers are record-breaking for an unofficial release.”
“We do not sell pain!” the Director snapped. “We sell fantasy. We sell aspiration. You sold them a bloody open wound. You have made BET pathetic.”
The word hung in the air. Pathetic. Min-ho felt it bounce off the new, hollow interior he’d built. It didn’t stick.
Jae-Hyun finally turned from the window. His face was grey with fatigue. “The immediate solution is hospitalization. Exhaustion. We put out a statement that you were overworked, emotionally compromised, and that the upload was a mistake during a period of crisis. We pull the track. You go to a quiet clinic in Jeju for a month. When you return, we do a carefully managed ‘healing’ arc. Solo ballad. Something sanitized and full of light.”
Min-ho almost laughed. The sound stuck in his throat as a dry cough. “No.”
“It is not a request.”
Before Min-ho could speak again, the door to the conference room opened. Ji-hoon stepped inside. He hadn’t been summoned. He bowed deeply to the table of executives. “I apologize for the interruption.”
The Director’s eyes narrowed. “This does not concern the group leader.”
“With respect, it concerns all of us,” Ji-hoon said, straightening. His voice was calm, but there was an iron rod in his spine. “Pulling the track now would be a mistake. The fans have already claimed it. Deleting it would be seen as the company silencing his truth, which is worse than the truth itself. The conversation is about artistic expression versus mental health. We can guide that conversation.”
He stepped forward, placing a printed analytics report on the table. “The engagement is overwhelmingly positive among our core demographic. They feel they’ve seen something real. The controversy is with older shareholders and conservative media. We can manage that.”
The executives looked at the data. A tense silence stretched. Jae-Hyun watched Ji-hoon, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
“And the disobedience? The blatant breach of contract?” the Director asked, though some of the heat had left his voice.
“Should be dealt with internally,” Ji-hoon said, locking eyes with Min-ho for a second. “Not with a public punishment that fans will see as confirmation of corporate cruelty.”
THE EXECUTIVES WERE ANGRY, BUT JI-HOON INTERCEDED ON MIN-HO'S BEHALF. A tense, murmured negotiation followed. The punishment was severe: a 40% cut from his next solo activities revenue, mandatory weekly sessions with a company-approved therapist whose reports would be shared with management, and a six-month ban on any personal social media use. But the track would stay. BET would not be sent to a clinic. He would work.
When the meeting ended, the executives filed out with Jae-Hyun, who shot Min-ho a final, unreadable look. The door hissed shut, leaving the two members alone in the cavernous, air-conditioned room.
Ji-hoon let out a long, shaky breath, the leader’s mask slipping. He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re an idiot. A magnificent, self-destructive idiot.”
Min-ho said nothing. He walked to the window, staring down at the ant-like traffic.
“You can’t keep up this self-destructive behavior,” Ji-hoon said, joining him at the glass. “Uploading raw demos is just the start. You don’t eat. You sleep in the practice room. You haven’t been on a single date, even a staged one, in two years. You’re a ghost in the dorm.”
Min-ho’s reflection in the glass was pale and sharp. “I give them good lyrics, good choreography, I sign autographs, I interact with fans. What more do they want from me?”
“I don’t mean destroy your image as an idol. I’m not talking about BET.” Ji-hoon’s voice dropped, earnest and pained. “I’m talking about Min-ho... Have you thought about dating someone else? Just… someone. To remember what it feels like.”
Min-ho looked at him furiously, but controlled himself. The muscle in his jaw jumped. He turned from the window, his eyes dark and empty. “Min-ho doesn’t exist. He died when she left, when they made me let her go. Now only BET exists, and he does what the executives want.” His voice was a monotone, but each word was chiseled from stone. “If it weren’t for the fact that my departure would affect you guys, I would have gotten on that plane with Maria that day.”
Ji-hoon shuddered upon hearing Maria's name. She had become a forbidden word. The album they made after the split had been one of the best in their careers, a sleek monument to professional pain, but no one was supposed to mention her, especially not when Min-ho was nearby. The name itself was a live wire thrown into water.
“You can’t say things like that,” Ji-hoon whispered, a real fear in his eyes. “You can’t even think them.”
“Why?” Min-ho asked, a horrible, quiet smile touching his lips. “It’s the only true thing left.”
He walked toward the door. His hand on the handle, he paused without looking back. “Tell Jae-Hyun I’m ready for the photoshoot. Tell the therapist I’ll see him tomorrow. Tell the fans whatever you need to.”
“Min-ho-yah—”
“BET,” Min-ho corrected, the door clicking shut behind him with finality.
Ji-hoon stood alone in the silent, gleaming room, the weight of his friend’s desolation settling over him like a physical cold. He looked at the city, but all he could see was the phantom of a man who had already left, years ago, standing on an empty tarmac, watching a plane disappear into the clouds. The ghost was now the only thing living inside the idol, and it was starving.
The ghost was now the only thing living inside the idol, and it was starving. It fed on scraps: the echo of a certain laugh in a crowded airport, the specific curve of a hip on a random passerby, the aching, four-minute fantasy of a song called “Y SI…?” He found himself in the practice studio long after everyone had left, the lights dimmed to a melancholic blue. The polished wood floor was cool against his back.
Her voice spilled from his phone’s speaker, intimate and devastating. ¿Sabes que pienso en ti los martes? He did know. He thought of her every day, but Tuesdays were the worst, a hollow midweek reminder of routine they’d never share. He stared at the ceiling’s acoustic tiles, visualizing the life she painted. Choosing kitchen tiles. A mountain drive. The crushing, beautiful weight of a child on his own hip—a concept so foreign to his reality it felt like science fiction. The song built a home around him, and he was forever on the outside, pressing his face against the glass.
The door hissed open. Three shadows entered. He didn’t move. Yose, Jae, and Ji-hoon simply walked over and sank to the floor beside him in a line, their backs against the mirror. They sat in the thick, shared silence as Maria’s final, whispered plea hung in the air. Te veré en otra vida. See you in another life.
Yose finally nudged Min-ho’s foot with his own. “I don’t speak Spanish. What’s it about?”
Min-ho kept his eyes on the ceiling. His throat was tight. “It’s about buying a house. And laundry. And driving. It’s about… the life you don’t get to have.”
Yose absorbed this, then nodded slowly, his analytical mind mapping the emotional data. “Right.”
Jae picked at a loose thread on his sweatpants. “I heard Management wants you to go on some dates. With that new idol from PinkLemon. For show.”
A dry, humorless sound escaped Min-ho. “If they want me to act, they’d better get me a drama. A historical one would be fun. Swords are less complicated.”
Ji-hoon watched him, seeing the fissures in the carefully maintained facade. He let the quiet stretch, then asked the air, “If you weren’t idols, what would you be?”
Yose didn’t hesitate. “I think I would have studied to be a writer. Published stories. Quietly.”
Jae shrugged, a grin tugging his lips. “I think I would have followed in my father’s footsteps and become a doctor. But not a gynecologist like him. I like women too much, and my father’s stories are… intense enough to hear. I don’t want to imagine living them.”
Ji-hoon’s gaze remained fixed on Min-ho, who hadn’t moved. “What if doesn’t exist,” Min-ho stated, his voice flat. “There’s no point in thinking about that.”
Ji-hoon sighed, a weary exhale. After a long pause, he said, “I would have been a lawyer. But the kind who takes child cases. To protect kids when no one else thinks about them.”
Silence descended again, heavier this time, filled with the ghosts of their unchosen selves. It lasted so long the blue-tinted light seemed to settle on their shoulders like dust.
Min-ho spoke, the words soft and surprising even to him. “I would have been a clothing designer. Bringing to life the sketches I make.” He’d never admitted it aloud; the notebook filled with fabric swatches and tailored lines was his most guarded secret.
Jae, lulled by the confessional mood, spoke without his usual filter. “Maria created her own clothing brand.”
The air in the room solidified. Jae’s eyes went wide the moment the name left his mouth. He flinched, bracing for the shut-down, the glacial wall. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Min-ho turned his head on the hard floor to look at him. He didn’t look angry. He looked exhausted. He reached over and patted Jae’s shoulder twice. “Don’t worry,” he said, the words utterly drained.
He pushed himself up then, his joints protesting. The other three watched him, a tableau of helpless support. He walked to the sound system, disconnected his phone. The phantom echo of the song seemed to linger. “We have rehearsal at seven,” he said, not looking back. “Don’t be late.”
He left them there on the floor, in the blue gloom, each nursing their own quiet what if. The door closed behind him with a soft, definitive click. He walked down the empty, over-lit hallway, his footsteps echoing. His hand went to his pocket, fingers brushing against the familiar edges of his sketchbook, a parallel life pressed flat against his thigh. He didn’t go to the dorm. He turned towards the company’s back exit, pulling his cap low. The city outside was hungry, and so was he.
The city outside was hungry, and so was he. He walked for blocks without seeing anything, the neon signs and late-night café windows blurring into streaks of color. His feet carried him to the edge of the Han River, where the breeze carried the damp smell of water and distant traffic. He sat on a cold bench, watching the occasional jogger pound past, their earbuds sealing them in private worlds. He envied that simple isolation.
His phone, set to silent, glowed in his hand. Notifications stacked like tombstones. One email header stood out: IVY MODE – Autumn Collection Lookbook. His thumb hovered, then swiped it open. It was a promotional blast, not personal. Inside were high-resolution images of Maria laughing in a Buenos Aires studio, surrounded by bolts of vibrant fabric. She was pointing at a sewing dummy, her hair a brilliant shock of red and pink against the earth tones. She looked alive. She looked rooted. He zoomed in on her face, on the faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there before. They suited her. A profound, aching warmth spread through his chest, followed immediately by a chill so deep it locked his joints. This was the life she was building, brick by brick, without him.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. The chill from the metal bench seeped through his jeans. Finally, his phone buzzed with a call. Ji-hoon. He answered.
“Where are you?” Ji-hoon’s voice was low, not angry.
“By the river.”
“Go to the usual spot. The one from before. We need to talk. All of us.”
The ‘usual spot’ was a basement jjajangmyeon place in a non-descript neighborhood, owned by a halmoni who didn’t care about celebrities. Min-ho arrived last. The air was thick with the smell of fried sauce and garlic. Ji-hoon, Yose, and Jae were already crammed into a back booth, a large bowl of tangsuyuk between them. They looked like any group of tired young men, not global idols.
Min-ho slid in, nodding to them. He didn’t speak. The halmoni brought him a cold beer without being asked. He drank half of it in one long pull, the bitter foam coating his tongue.
For a few minutes, they just ate. The sound of chopsticks on ceramic, the crunch of fried pork. It was a comfortable, weary silence. Ji-hoon finished his noodles, wiped his mouth, and leaned back. He looked at each of them in turn.
“Well,” Ji-hoon started, his tone deliberately casual. “We’re at our highest point. We’re on worldwide charts, we have many sponsors fighting over us, we’re the face every brand wants, we’re breaking records.”
Yose looked up from his phone, where he’d been monitoring their streaming numbers for the new Japanese release. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Your point is…?”
Ji-hoon swirled the tea in his cup. “We keep going around in circles. We’ve spent years releasing songs that talk about the same thing, just with different beats.” He paused, his gaze landing on Min-ho, then Jae, then Yose. “Does that fulfill you?”
Min-ho scoffed, a short, sharp exhale through his nose. He stared at a sticky patch on the table.
Yose laughed, an ironic, hollow sound. He put his phone down. “Since we won the Grammys… no.” He glanced at Jae. “It’s all the same.”
Jae nodded, stabbing a piece of sweet-and-sour pork. “Yeah. Since we won the Grammys… no, it’s all the same. We do the promotion cycle, the fan meets, the variety shows. It’s a template. We just change the colors.”
“Exactly,” Ji-hoon said, his voice dropping. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. The casual pretense fell away. “And not only do we have the fame, but in a few weeks we have to renew our contract with the company.”
A tangible charge went through the booth. Everyone shifted in their seats — they had forgotten about that. The last renewal had been a formality, a celebration. This felt different. The weight of Min-ho’s solo track, the unspoken exhaustion in all of them, the spectral presence of roads not taken hung over the table like a pall.
Ji-hoon continued, his words measured and clear. “It’s time to make changes. If not, we need to analyze what we want to do. I want you to think about what you want to do from now on.” He made eye contact with each of them, a leader not giving orders, but asking for a consensus. “We’ll discuss it among ourselves and then face the company. But keep acting like nothing’s wrong. Be good idols until the right moment.”
Silence. The hum of the restaurant’s old refrigerator seemed loud. Yose slowly nodded, his analyst’s mind already categorizing variables and outcomes. Jae’s usual playful grin was gone, replaced by a thoughtful, serious expression Min-ho rarely saw.
Min-ho finally spoke, his voice rough. “What kind of changes?”
“That’s what we need to figure out,” Ji-hoon said. “Creative control. Schedules that don’t kill us. The right to have a private life that isn’t a crime scene. The right to say no.” He looked directly at Min-ho. “The right to make music that isn’t a product first.”
Min-ho felt something stir in his chest, a dormant, brittle thing. Hope. It was frightening. “They’ll never agree.”
“Then we have leverage,” Yose said quietly. All eyes turned to him. He adjusted his glasses. “The contract renewal is the leverage. Four of us, together. They can’t afford to lose D.A.R.K. We are the company’s flagship. If we present a united front…”
“It’s a risk,” Jae finished, his voice uncharacterively grim. “A huge one. They could call our bluff. They could start grooming our replacements tomorrow.”
“They could,” Ji-hoon conceded. “But we’re not replaceable. Not really. The fans, the history, the sound… it’s us.” He let that sit. “Think about it. What do you want? Not as BET, or YOSE, or JAE, or JI-HOON. As the person sitting at this sticky table right now.”
The question hung in the greasy air. Min-ho’s fingers traced the condensation on his beer bottle. He saw Maria’s lookbook, the kitchen tiles from her song, the sketches in his own secret notebook. He saw the endless, polished hallways of the company, the Director’s cold eyes, the exhausting performance of being flawlessly empty.
He wanted to create something that didn’t have a market analysis attached. He wanted to walk down a street without calculating angles for potential cameras. He wanted to hear a specific laugh and be able to turn towards it without causing an international incident.
He didn’t say any of that. Instead, he finished his beer and set the bottle down with a firm clink.
“Okay,” Min-ho said. The single word felt like the first real thing he’d said in years. “I’ll think about it.”
Ji-hoon nodded, a look of profound relief flashing across his face. “Good. That’s all. For now, we eat. We go back. We smile.” He picked up his chopsticks and pointed them at the diminishing plate of tangsuyuk. “And someone finish this before it gets soggy.”
The conversation drifted to mundane things, a practiced return to normalcy. But the atmosphere had shifted. The weight was still there, but it was a shared weight now, carried on four sets of shoulders instead of one. As they paid the bill and filed out into the cool night, nodding their thanks to the halmoni, Min-ho felt a strange, fragile sense of clarity. The path ahead was shrouded in fog and risk, but for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t standing still. He was walking towards something, even if he couldn’t yet see its shape. The city’s lights reflected in puddles from an earlier rain, broken and shimmering, pointing a thousand different ways home.