Chapter 2: White Lines and Bad Decisions
The fire exit door swung shut with a final, sighing click, leaving Minjeong alone in the buzzing silence of the studio. Theo cleared his throat, a sound like gravel shifting. “Well. Let’s get your solos, Winter. We’ve lost the light on the duo concept.”
The next hour was a mechanical blur. Smile. Tilt. Change. Pose. Minjeong performed flawlessly, her body moving on autopilot while her mind replayed the last sixty seconds on a scorching loop. You have no idea what my nights are. The venom in that quiet voice. The way Karina’s controlled facade had shattered into something so genuine it was almost savage.
Her manager, a woman named So-yeon with the perpetual expression of someone smelling something faintly off, appeared as Minjeong was changing back into her own clothes. “A bit dramatic, don’t you think? She’s known for being difficult. You didn’t have to engage.”
“I was making conversation,” Minjeong said, pulling a soft cashmere sweater over her head. “It’s what humans do.”
“With her, it’s a strategic error. Her fans are… militant. If she tweets something vague, they’ll swarm your feeds for weeks.”
“Let them.” Minjeong’s brattiness was a reflex, but it felt thin, papery. She gathered her bag. “Is she gone?”
“Her team whisked her out the back. Damage control.” So-yeon checked her watch. “You have the Vogue fitting in an hour. Car’s outside.”
Minjeong nodded, but instead of heading to the front entrance, she turned down the corridor toward the bathrooms. She told herself she needed a moment. To fix her lip gloss. To breathe. The lie was transparent even to her.
The studio’s main bathroom was all polished concrete and orchids. Empty. She leaned against a sink, staring at her own reflection. The girl who said whatever she wanted, who bought what she liked, who slept when she felt like it. The girl who had just been surgically dismantled by a look.
A low, metallic bang echoed from further down the hall. A service door, maybe. Or a fire exit. The one Karina had used.
Pushing off the sink, Minjeong followed the sound. The sleek corridor gave way to a narrower, older hallway lined with janitorial closets and electrical panels. The air grew cooler, smelling of concrete dust and lemon-scented disinfectant. Another door, heavy and unmarked, stood slightly ajar. A dim, pulsing red exit sign glowed above it.
She pushed it open.
The noise hit her first. The thump of bass, distorted and watery, leaking from a distant club or passing car. Then the smell. Stale beer, old urine, and underneath it, a damp, mineral scent like a cave. She was in an alleyway that ran behind the row of studios, a canyon of brick and dripping air conditioner units. To her left, the alley opened to a street; to her right, it dead-ended at a high wall.
And there, in the right-hand pocket of gloom, was a sliver of sickly yellow light spilling from another doorway. A secondary entrance to an old, condemned-looking bar next door. The sign was broken, reading only “EL’S.” The door was propped open with a cinderblock.
Minjeong’s heels clicked on the wet asphalt. She didn’t know why she was walking toward it. It was a terrible idea.
She peered inside.
It wasn’t the main bar. It was a bathroom. A horror of a bathroom. A single, fly-specked bulb flickered overhead, making the shadows in the room shudder. The walls were a chaotic collage of peeling, water-stained wallpaper and graffiti. The floor tiles were cracked and slick with a film of oily moisture. The air was thick with steam from a broken, hissing pipe in the corner, carrying the sour tang of cheap whiskey and something else, something sharp and chemical.
And there, reflected in the large, age-cracked mirror above a row of porcelain sinks, was Karina.
She was leaning over the far sink, her back to the door. Her silver hair, free of the beanie, was a mess. Her posture was all taut lines, shoulders hunched. In the mirror’s fractured glass, her face was a collection of disjointed pieces: one dark, dilated eye, a slice of sharp cheekbone, the stark red of her lips.
Minjeong watched, frozen in the doorway, as Karina’s reflection brought a small, plastic bag to the chipped porcelain. With a steady, practiced hand, she tapped out a short, neat line of white powder onto the cold surface. She rolled a won bill into a tight tube.
She bent forward.
The sound was a soft, quick sniff. Efficient. Desperate.
Karina straightened up, her head tilting back, eyes closing. A shudder ran through her frame, a wave of chemical relief that visibly unspooled the tension in her neck. She held still for a five-count, breathing through her mouth.
Then her eyes snapped open.
They found Minjeong’s in the cracked mirror.
For a second, there was nothing. Just the hum of the bad light, the drip of the pipe. Karina’s pupils were vast, black pools swallowing the brown of her irises. There was no shock in them. No embarrassment. Just a weary, profound recognition, as if she’d been expecting this all along.
Slowly, never breaking eye contact in the glass, Karina lifted her hand. Her index finger brushed along the porcelain, gathering the tiny, residual grains of powder. She brought her finger to her mouth, her tongue flicking out to lick it clean. The gesture was defiant, achingly slow, and blatantly vulgar. A challenge. Go on. Say it. Be disgusted.
Minjeong’s heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. The chemical smell, now identified, coated the back of her throat. She should leave. She should call someone. She should do a lot of things.
She took a step into the room. The damp air clung to her skin.
“That stuff,” Minjeong said, and her voice was quieter than she intended, barely a murmur over the dripping sink. “It’s cut with levamisole. You know that, right? It’s a cattle dewormer.”
Karina blinked. The challenge in her expression flickered, replaced by pure, unadulterated confusion. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear.
“What?” The word was hoarse.
“The coke. It’s almost always cut with levamisole. It can, like… eat holes in your face. Necrotizing lesions. It’s not even about the addiction. It’s about getting a parasite medication in your brain because some asshole in a warehouse wanted to stretch his product.” Minjeong leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms. Her tone was matter-of-fact, almost clinical. “Just seems like a really stupid way to ruin a good thing.”
Karina stared at her. The drug’s effect was there, in the slight tremor in her hands, the unnatural stillness of her body otherwise, but Minjeong’s words seemed to pierce through the haze. She looked down at the sink, then back at the reflection.
“You’re not…” Karina started, then shook her head slightly. “A lecture?”
“Not a lecture. A fact. You’re a precision instrument. That,” Minjeong nodded toward the bag still clenched in Karina’s hand, “is sand in the gears. It’s dumb.”
A harsh, brittle laugh escaped Karina’s throat. She turned around, leaning back against the sink, facing Minjeong directly. The fluorescent light carved deep shadows under her eyes. “You have no idea what the gears feel like when they’re grinding. The noise. You wouldn’t last a day.”
“Maybe not,” Minjeong conceded. She uncrossed her arms. “But I also wouldn’t snort livestock medicine in a bathroom that probably has antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea on the floor. There are classier ways to fall apart.”
Karina’s mouth twisted. She looked young suddenly, and terribly tired. The defiance was leaching away, leaving something raw and exposed. “Why are you here?”
“I followed you.”
“I know that. Why?”
Minjeong considered the question. The real answer was a tangle she couldn’t articulate: the haunting stage presence, the icy interview, the ferocious vulnerability, the mystery that was so much sadder and more human than she’d imagined. “Because you walked out,” she said, opting for a sliver of truth. “And nobody says ‘no’ to me.”
That elicited another faint, hollow sound, almost a laugh. Karina shoved the small bag into the pocket of her hoodie. “Congratulations. You’ve seen the monster in its cave. Now you can go write your think-piece. ‘The Real Cost of Fame.’ ‘The Tragedy of Karina.’” She mimed a headline with her fingers, her voice dripping with a scorn so deep it had to be armor.
“I don’t write think-pieces,” Minjeong said. “I do hauls and roasting bad makeup. This is… off-brand for me.”
Silence stretched between them, filled by the relentless drip-drip-drip from the pipe. Karina studied her, the drug allowing for a unnerving, unblinking focus. “You’re not scared?”
“Of you? Please. You’re what, five-nine? I’ve fought stylists for less.”
“Of this.” Karina gestured vaguely around the fetid room, at herself. “Of the contagion.”
Minjeong pushed off the doorjamb and took a few steps closer. She stopped a few feet away, well outside of touching distance. “I’m rich, bored, and chronically curious. I’m not scared of much.” She met Karina’s dilated gaze. “But I am… disappointed.”
Karina flinched, a tiny, genuine recoil. That word, somehow, cut deeper than anger or disgust.
“The product is the performance, right?” Minjeong continued, softly throwing Karina’s own words back at her. “This seems like a shitty way to maintain the product.”
Tears, sudden and bright, welled in Karina’s eyes. They didn’t fall. She seemed as surprised by them as Minjeong was. She looked away, swiping at them angrily with the back of her hand. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know levamisole causes lesions. And I know you rehearsed all last night for no reason.” Minjeong took a breath. “That’s two things. That’s a start.”
Karina’s shoulders slumped. The armor cracked, and what bled through was exhaustion so complete it was a physical presence in the room. She slid down the cabinet until she was sitting on the filthy floor, her back against the sink, legs drawn up. She looked up at Minjeong from that defeated position. “Go away, Winter.”
“Minjeong.”
“What?”
“My name. It’s Minjeong. You can use it.” She didn’t leave. Instead, she gingerly lowered herself to sit on the dryish part of the floor opposite Karina, tucking her expensive dress under her knees. The absurdity of the scene—two of the most photographed young women in the country sitting in the foul bathroom of a dead bar—was not lost on her.
They sat in silence for a long minute. The chemical energy was fading from Karina, leaving a tremulous stillness.
“It’s not for fun,” Karina finally said, her voice barely audible. She wasn’t looking at Minjeong, but at the graffiti on the wall. “It’s just… a reset. The volume gets too loud. This turns it down.”
“Until it turns it up way, way higher,” Minjeong said, but without the earlier edge. It was just a fact.
“I know.” Karina rested her forehead on her knees. “I know.”
Another drip. Another passing bass thump from the street.
“What’s your hidden talent?” Minjeong asked.
Karina lifted her head, bewildered. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re a pop star. That’s the public talent. What’s the secret one? The thing you do just for you. If you say ‘rehearsing,’ I’m leaving.”
A long pause. Karina’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. “I… draw. Sometimes.”
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s mine.” The words were sharp, defensive. A final line drawn in the sand.
Minjeong held up her hands in surrender. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” She made to stand up, her muscles protesting the cold, hard floor. “My fitting’s in twenty minutes. I have to wear something hideous, probably.”
As she reached the doorway, Karina’s voice stopped her.
“Minjeong.”
She turned.
Karina was still on the floor, a pale figure in the gloom. Her eyes were clearer now, the black pools receding slightly. “You won’t… tell anyone.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a plea, stripped bare of all pretense.
Minjeong looked at her—the beautiful, broken girl surrounded by cracked porcelain and peeling walls. The girl who held stadiums captive but couldn’t hold herself together in a quiet room.
“Who would I tell?” Minjeong said, with a slight, one-shouldered shrug. “My subscribers want glitter tutorials and airport fashion. This?” She gestured at the room. “This doesn’t get clicks.”
And she walked out, leaving Karina sitting in the yellow light, the taste of cattle dewormer and disgrace on her tongue, and the strange, unsettling echo of a girl who hadn’t screamed, hadn’t judged, but had simply stated a fact about face-eating parasites.
Back in the clean, sanitized car on the way to her fitting, Minjeong leaned her head against the cool window. Her phone buzzed with a notification from So-yeon: Vogue running late. Stop for coffee?
She typed back: No. Going home. Reschedule.
She stared at her reflection in the car window, superimposed over the passing city. She didn’t see the brash vlogger. She saw the girl in the cracked mirror, licking powder from her finger, expecting a world’s condemnation and receiving, instead, a bizarre, clinical kind of care.
It was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in years.
At home, she poured a glass of water but didn’t drink it. She opened her laptop, her fingers hovering over the keys. She searched not for Karina’s performances, but for medical journals. For the pharmacology of levamisole. For the pathology of necrosis.
She was mapping the contours of a disaster, and she couldn’t look away.
She was mapping the contours of a disaster, and she couldn’t look away. The clinical articles with their graphic images of skin necrosis blurred on the screen. She finally shut the laptop with a sharp click, the silence of her apartment suddenly oppressive. Her phone glowed—a notification from the studio’s accounting department, a dry email about the shoot’s completion and invoice processing.
It was the word ‘completion’ that did it. It felt like a lie.
Without examining the impulse too closely, she grabbed her keys and a hoodie, pulling it on over her cashmere sweater. The elevator ride down to the parking garage was a smooth, silent descent. Her sports car, a low-slung thing of polished silver, purred to life.
She told herself she was just driving. That the night air might clear the chemical smell that still seemed lodged in her sinuses.
The streets near the studio were quieter now, the earlier industry buzz replaced by the hollow sounds of cleanup crews. She circled the block once, her tires whispering over wet asphalt. Her eyes scanned the shadows near the service alley, that dreadful door. Nothing.
Then she saw the car.
It was a sleek, black sedan, expensive but anonymous, parked under a flickering streetlight two blocks down. Its hazard lights blinked a slow, repetitive red pulse into the dimness. As Minjeong rolled closer, she recognized the figure leaning against the driver’s side door, head bowed, silver hair catching the erratic light.
Karina.
Minjeong pulled her car to the curb, killing the engine. She watched for a moment. Karina wasn’t moving. She was just standing there, forehead nearly touching the cool glass of the window, her hands braced on the roof. The posture was one of utter defeat, or of someone concentrating very hard on not being sick.
Getting out, Minjeong approached slowly. The night air was chillier now, carrying the distant wail of a siren. “Hey.”
Karina jerked upright, whirling around. Her eyes were wide, the pupils still not right. A film of sweat glistened on her pale forehead. Fear flashed across her face before she locked it down into a mask of cold irritation. “What are you, a stray cat? Do you just follow people home?”
“You’re not home. You’re in the middle of the street with your hazards on.” Minjeong kept her voice even, nodding toward the blinking lights. “Your engine’s off.”
“I’m fine. I’m just… taking a minute.” Karina’s words were slightly too deliberate, a sign she was focusing hard on her articulation. She gripped the door handle for balance.
“You’re swaying.”
“I am not.”
“You are. It’s subtle, but it’s there.” Minjeong came closer, stopping a few feet away. She could see the rapid flutter of Karina’s pulse in her throat. “You can’t drive like this. You’ll wrap this very nice car around a pole, or worse, hit someone.”
Karina let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “What do you care? You got your glimpse behind the curtain. Run along and gossip.”
“If I was going to gossip, I’d have done it already.” Minjeong sighed, stuffing her hands into her hoodie pocket. “Look, I don’t know you. You’re probably, as my friend says, a massive bitch.” She saw Karina flinch but pressed on. “But I also know what levamisole does. And I’d rather not see your face on the news tomorrow morning peeled off like bad wallpaper because you drove into a bridge abutment. It would ruin my latte.”
There was a long silence. Karina stared at her, the cold facade wavering under a wave of pure, uncomprehending shock. Her lips parted slightly. The defensiveness slowly drained from her posture, leaving something baffled and exposed. The idea—that a virtual stranger was standing on a cold street at night worried about her physical safety—seemed to bypass all her defenses entirely.
“You’re… worried,” Karina finally said, the words not a question but a dazed realization.
“Annoyed, mostly,” Minjeong corrected, though the correction was weak. “This is cutting into my beauty sleep.”
Karina didn’t seem to hear her. She looked down at her own hands, white-knuckled on the car’s roof, then back at Minjeong. The shock in her eyes was profound, almost childlike. “No one… my manager would be worried about the car. The scandal. The schedule. Not… this.”
Her voice was so quiet the last words were almost swallowed by the city’s hum.
Minjeong felt an unfamiliar pang in her chest. It wasn’t pity. It was more like vertigo, a sudden understanding of the sheer, isolating scale of Karina’s world. Where a basic human concern was a foreign currency.
“Well, I’m worried about the car too,” Minjeong said, aiming for lightness and landing somewhere closer to gentle. “It’s nicer than mine. Call someone. Your manager. A driver. I’ll wait.”
Karina shook her head, a quick, frantic motion. “I can’t. Not after today. She’ll… it’ll be a whole thing. Lectures. More pills. Watchdogs.” She swallowed hard. “I just need to get home.”
“Then let me drive you.”
The offer hung between them, simple and enormous.
Karina’s stunned expression deepened. “What?”
“You’re two blocks from where you did a line of veterinary medicine. Your motor skills are compromised. It’s basic logic.” Minjeong held out her hand. “Keys. I’ll have a car service bring me back here for mine later. Or you can send me home in your fancy car tomorrow. I don’t care.”
“Why would you do that?” The question was naked, stripped of all performance.
Minjeong shrugged, the gesture feeling inadequate. “Because it’s a Tuesday? Because I’m bored? Take your pick.” She met Karina’s bewildered gaze. “Maybe I just want to see what a pop star’s apartment looks like. I’m shallow, remember?”
Karina continued to stare, the streetlight casting long shadows across her face. The internal war was visible: profound suspicion battling against a desperate, physical need for someone—anyone—to just handle this one thing. The trembling in her hands decided it.
With a slow, reluctant movement, she pushed the key fob into Minjeong’s waiting palm. Their fingers didn’t touch.
“Don’t… don’t judge the décor,” Karina mumbled, looking away as she moved toward the passenger side. It was a ridiculous, vulnerable thing to say, and it made Minjeong’s throat feel tight.
“I’m judging everything,” Minjeong replied, sliding into the driver’s seat. The leather was cold. She adjusted the mirror, seeing Karina fold herself into the passenger seat, a compact silhouette of exhaustion. “It’s what I do. Address?”
Karina gave it, a high-end district known for its silent, towering buildings. The car eased away from the curb. The only sound was the gentle hum of the engine and the rhythmic click of the turn signal.
Minjeong drove carefully, her eyes on the road, hyper-aware of the silent woman beside her. Karina had curled herself toward the window, her reflection a pale smudge against the dark glass. She was holding herself very still, as if any movement might shatter the bizarre truce holding the night together.
After ten minutes, Karina spoke, her voice barely audible. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“It was… a really stupid way.”
Minjeong didn’t answer. She just nodded once, keeping her eyes on the taillights of the car ahead. The admission hung in the warm, quiet space between them, fragile and real. The city lights streamed past, painting their silence in streaks of white and gold.