The Second Phone

By 5:00 a.m. Hana is in the van with a sheet mask on her face and her eyes closed, as if the rooftop never happened.

The SOLSTICE van is black, with tinted windows and seats that recline like a first-class cabin. The driver, a gray-haired man named Mr. Oh, nods once when you climb into the front passenger seat, then hands you a tangerine from the glovebox without a word.

"He likes you," whispers Dasol from the back row. She's the youngest, twenty-three, with bleached hair and a voice that never drops below excited. "He only gives tangerines to people he likes. He gave Jae-won one on his third month."

"Dasol," says Yuri.

"I'm just saying!"

In the middle row, Jang Mirae, the fourth member, is scrolling on her phone with the screen turned away from everyone. She hasn't said a word to you yet. She has the kind of face that ends up on perfume ads, still and perfect, and she watches you in the reflection of the window the way a cat watches a new piece of furniture.

Hana, beside her, peels one corner of her sheet mask back and looks straight at you in the rearview mirror. Then she lets it fall again.

You eat your tangerine.

The music show is chaos with a lighting rig.

The broadcast station's backstage is a maze of narrow hallways packed with other groups, other managers, other stylists running with steamers and hair irons. Everyone is bowing to everyone. Someone's lead dancer is crying in a stairwell. Someone else is eating kimbap over a trash can in full stage makeup.

You have a schedule, a clipboard, a radio earpiece you don't understand, and four women depending on you to know where they're supposed to be at any given minute.

You get it mostly right.

You find their dressing room on the first try, which apparently is a miracle. You figure out that the stage director wants them in position six minutes earlier than the printed schedule. You stop a staff member from another agency who tries to borrow SOLSTICE's steamer, politely, in a Korean you hope sounds firm instead of rude.

During the prerecording you stand at the side of the stage in the dark and watch them perform for three hundred fans holding light sticks shaped like little silver suns. The fans chant every member's name in perfect rhythm. When it's Hana's turn, everything changes. Under the stage lights she's almost too much to look at directly: the cheekbones, the dark eyes, the way the camera operators unconsciously drift toward her even when it's someone else's line. The chant doubles, the light sticks go higher, and she smiles a smile you recognize from the soda cans. It's bright and flawless and very far away.

It isn't the face you saw on the roof.

On the third take she misses a step. Tiny. Nobody in the crowd notices. You notice, and so does she, because when the cameras cut she presses her hand flat against her stomach for one long second before the smile comes back.

When they come off stage, you have a water bottle ready with the cap already loosened. Hana takes it without looking at you. Her fingers are cold.

"You're not supposed to do that," she says quietly.

"Do what?"

"Notice things."

The trouble starts in the parking lot.

There's a gray sedan two cars behind the van when you pull out of the broadcast station. It's still there at the first light. And the second. When Mr. Oh takes a sudden right, the gray sedan takes a sudden right.

"Sasaeng," says Yuri, flatly, from the back.

You've read about them. Obsessive fans who follow idols to their homes, who buy their flight seats, who call their private numbers at three in the morning just to hear them breathe. You didn't really believe the stories until you see the passenger in the gray car holding a camera with a lens as long as your arm.

"They'll follow us to the dorm," Dasol says. She doesn't sound excited anymore. "They found it last year. We had to move."

Mirae says nothing. Hana has pulled her hood up over her rose-colored hair.

You look at the map on your phone, then at Mr. Oh.

"Is there a department store near here," you ask in Korean, "with a big underground garage? Multiple exits?"

Mr. Oh glances at you. Something like interest flickers in his eyes. "Seongsu Grand Mall. Two kilometers."

"Can you call someone to bring a second car to the bottom level?"

He's already picking up his phone.

Ten minutes later, the black van rolls slowly down into the parking garage, spiral after spiral, the gray sedan following at a careful distance. On the fourth level down, Mr. Oh pulls into a space between two pillars. A plain white minivan is idling right beside it, a young driver at the wheel.

"Go," you say. "Heads down. Quick."

The four of them move like they've rehearsed it, which, you realize, maybe they have. Doors slide. Feet hit concrete. In ten seconds they're in the white minivan and you're sliding the door shut behind them. Mr. Oh pulls the black van out and heads back up the ramp at a leisurely pace, with the gray sedan dutifully following him.

The white minivan leaves through the exit on the other side of the building.

For a long minute nobody speaks.

Then Dasol bursts out laughing and grabs the back of your seat with both hands and shakes it. "That was so cool! Did you see their faces? We didn't see their faces, but I bet their faces were—"

"Dasol," says Yuri, but she's smiling.

Hana is quiet. She's looking at you in the side mirror again. When you look back, she doesn't look away.

"Jae-won never did that, Ethan," she says.

"Is that good or bad?"

She considers it. "I haven't decided."

You get back to your little officetel in Mangwon-dong a little after nine at night. Your roommate, Tess, an old friend from LA who moved to Seoul two years ago to bartend and has been sending you apartment listings ever since, has left you a note on the fridge: WELCOME TO KOREA. THERE IS KIMCHI. DO NOT TOUCH MY SOJU.

You haven't even taken your shoes off when your work phone buzzes.

CEO Yoon would like to see you. 9:30 p.m. 23rd floor.

There is no 23rd floor on the elevator panel. You find out there's a separate elevator for it, behind a door with a keypad, and a quiet assistant who brings you there and leaves.

Yoon Tae-sik's office is warm wood and soft lamplight, nothing like Sora's glass. There's a bonsai on his desk and a tea set beside it. He's in his late fifties, gray at the temples, with the gentle face of a man who gives speeches at graduations. You've seen him on TV, crying when SOLSTICE won their first daesang. He stands up when you enter. He pours you tea himself.

"I heard about the department store," he says, smiling. "Very clever, young man. Hana's safety is everything to us."

"Thank you, sir."

"You'll find this company is a family." He sets the cup in front of you. "And in a family, we look out for one another. Hana is... a sensitive girl. She doesn't sleep. Sometimes she disappears. Sometimes she talks to people she shouldn't."

He opens a drawer and places a phone on the desk between you. Slim, black, brand new.

"A small favor," he says. "Each night, a short message on this phone. Where she went. Who she spoke with. Anything unusual. Only so we can protect her."

You don't touch it.

"With respect, sir," you say carefully, "that sounds like a job for security."

Yoon's smile doesn't change. That's the most frightening part. It doesn't change at all.

"Jae-won said something very similar," he says, and pushes the phone one more inch toward you. "Your predecessor refused, Ethan." He lifts his teacup. "Ask yourself where he is now."