#dlamlt1

A dancer can smile through a bad landing, cheat half an inch out of a turn, hold an extension three seconds past the point where the muscle starts begging for mercy. It does not matter. The body keeps records. Give it eight counts and it will tell on you.

People do the same thing. Dancers just use better lighting.

The wings smell like rosin and hot gel and the particular dust that only exists in theaters built before anyone thought to ask what stage floors should be made of.

Sweat, cold cream, the metallic tang of the fly system somewhere above your head.

You come down off the stage still half-inside the performance, the house lights bleeding gold through the gap in the legs behind you, applause collapsing into the low roar of an audience getting up out of their seats, coats, bags, someone's perfume already overpowering the greenroom air before you've even reached it.

Your body is still counting.

It always is, for a while after. Eight counts, eight counts, eight counts, the tempo living somewhere under your sternum long after the orchestra's gone quiet.

You saw it happen from the wings, twenty minutes ago, mid-number — Marisol's landing off the pirouette sequence, the fraction of a second where her weight found the floor wrong. Nobody else would have caught it. The audience didn't. Even half the company didn't, because it was small, and she recovered fast, and recovery is the entire job. But you catch things like that the way other people catch a wrong note in a song they've heard a thousand times. You don't decide to notice. You just do. It's the same instinct that's kept you employed since you were four years old, and the same one that makes you insufferable at dinner parties, according to your mother.

So you don't head for your own dressing room first. You go straight for hers, weaving backstage through the tangle of moving set pieces and stagehands calling clear behind you, letting the muscle memory of this specific building — which door sticks, which hallway is narrower than it looks — carry you there faster than thinking would.

The dressing room is thick with hairspray, sweat, cold cream, and the particular overheated air of an old Broadway theater in December. Around you, the company is dismantling the evening version of themselves. Wigs come off. Makeup disappears beneath cleansing balm. Someone has connected a phone to the speakers and turned the music up loud enough to compete with three separate conversations about where everyone is going after the show.

Marisol is halfway through removing her eyelashes when you find her, one still attached, the other pinched between two fingers, leaving her face in a state of interrupted symmetry. She doesn't look up. She knows exactly why you're standing in her doorway, and she is, visibly, hoping you'll let it go anyway.

You don't.

"Your ankle."

Marisol stops halfway through removing her eyelashes. One is still attached, the other pinched between two fingers, leaving her face in a state of interrupted symmetry.

"What about my ankle?"

"It's swelling."

"It is not."

You look at her. Just look, the flat, unhurried kind of look that has ended more arguments in this dressing room than actual words ever could.

She looks down. Her left ankle has already started pushing against the satin ribbon of her shoe.

"Okay," she says. "It is doing something."

"It's swelling."

"You make everything sound so judgmental."

"Your ligaments don't care about my tone."

You crouch in front of Marisol before she can object, press two fingers carefully along the outside of her ankle, and watch her face.

She flinches. The wince is small and involuntary, gone almost as fast as it arrives, but you clocked it before she could smooth it over.

"You're icing it."

"I'm going dancing." Marisol says it lightly, like the matter's already settled, already reaching for her other eyelash as if the conversation is over.

"You have just spent two and a half hours dancing."

"That was employment. This is different." She says it with her particular cheer, because she knows she's losing and has decided charm is her best remaining strategy.

"You're icing it."

Marisol studies you for a moment, head tilted, weighing the likelihood that she can win this conversation. She has known you for seven weeks. She knows better. Something in her shoulders drops half an inch — the tell-tale give of someone conceding before they've said so out loud.

"You're very controlling for someone who claims not to care about people." It comes out fond despite itself, an accusation with no real heat behind it.

"I have never claimed that." Flat. Immovable. You don't even look up from where you're already reaching for the ice pack.

"You imply it with your face."

"That sounds like a personal interpretation." One eyebrow lifts, just slightly. The closest thing you offer to amusement when you're busy winning an argument.

You rise and take an instant ice pack from the emergency drawer beneath the makeup counter. You crack it against your palm and hand it to her. She accepts it with a sigh dramatic enough for the mezzanine, head tipping back against the mirror like she's been asked to give up a limb rather than twenty minutes of her evening.

"Twenty minutes," you say. "Then compression. If it hurts tomorrow, you tell stage management before warm-up."

"Yes, Mom."

"Your mother would let you go dancing?"

"My mother likes me."

You turn away before she catches the smile pulling at the corner of your mouth. You are not in the business of confirming that you have a sense of humor. It ruins the effect.

Behind you, someone calls your name.

A girl is hovering near the dressing-room door with a program held against her chest like a shield. She cannot be older than sixteen, although the severe bun and the posture say she has been attending ballet classes long enough to have been told that standing normally is a moral failure.

"Sorry," she says immediately. "I know you're probably busy."

You are. You are also still wearing half your stage makeup and one false eyelash. There is a bruise forming beneath your right knee, your toes are numb, and you have approximately eleven minutes before the stage door becomes crowded enough to make leaving unpleasant.

You put the ice pack more firmly against Marisol's ankle anyway.

"What's your name?"

The girl blinks, startled that you asked. "Sophie."

"Hi, Sophie."

She exhales like you have granted her something enormous.

"We studied A Study in Blue at my summer program," she says. "The Vienna recording. I've watched your solo. I don't know, probably fifty times."

"It was better by closing night."

Her face falls, just slightly, the specific crumple of someone who came here hoping for a moment and is worried she's already ruined it.

You soften the statement before she can mistake accuracy for rejection.

"The company filmed the second week. We were still finding it." You gesture toward the program, your tone gentler now than it was with Marisol, something in Sophie's careful posture makes you want to be careful back. "Do you dance?"

"Ballet. Mostly." She says it almost apologetically, like she's bracing for the answer to matter more than it should. "But I want to do contemporary."

"Then do contemporary." You say it simply while you sign her program, like it's the most obvious thing in the world, because to you it is.

"My teacher says I should wait until my classical technique is stronger." Her eyes drop to the program now in her hands when she says it, the specific shame of a kid repeating a rule she doesn't actually believe in.

"Your teacher is afraid you'll enjoy yourself."

Marisol snorts behind you, ice pack still pressed to her ankle, entirely too delighted by the way you just detonated a stranger's ballet teacher in four words.

Sophie's mouth twitches, caught somewhere between a laugh and asking permission for one, her eyes flicking to you like she's checking whether it's safe to find you funny.

"Keep the ballet," you tell her. "It gives you somewhere solid to push from. But don't wait for someone else to decide you're ready to move differently."

You hand it back. Sophie thanks you three times before disappearing into the corridor, clutching the program the way people clutch things they intend to keep for a very long time.

Marisol watches you over the top of the ice pack.

"What?"

"Nothing." Marisol's mouth is doing something it clearly doesn't want to do, pressed flat to keep from spreading into a full grin, and failing.

"You're looking at me." You say it without turning fully around, aware of her eyes on you anyway. You always are.

"I'm looking at the cold, terrifying woman who just changed a teenager's life while wearing one eyelash." The grin wins. It spreads slow and unguarded, the kind she'd deny giving you if you called her on it, one hand still pressed to the ice pack like she's forgotten it's there.

"Her life will survive the interaction." You keep your face carefully unmoved, but there's something at the corner of your mouth that gives you away completely — the two of you speaking a whole conversation neither of you is willing to say out loud.

"Come out with us."

"No." No hesitation. No glance up.

"You didn't even pretend to consider it."

"I considered it yesterday when you asked." Dry, already reaching for your bag.

"That was for yesterday."

"The answer has maintained structural integrity."

Marisol drops her head back against the mirror, a hand over her heart like you've wounded her, though the grin underneath says otherwise — the picture of someone who's accepted defeat but wants credit for the effort. "You are twenty-nine years old."

"I'm aware."

"You're finishing a perfect show eight times a week, men are frightened of you, women want to be you, and you go home every night before midnight."

"Some of us enjoy sleep."

"Some of us are wasting excellent cheekbones." She says it to the ceiling now, mournful, like she's mourning the cheekbones personally.

You start peeling tape from around your toes, not looking up. "I use them at work."

"That sentence is why you're going to die alone." But she's laughing when she says it, already halfway to letting you win.

Your phone vibrates inside your bag. You ignore it.

Marisol's eyes flick toward the sound, sharp with sudden interest, ice pack forgotten. "Secret lover?"

"No."

"You answered quickly."

"Because the answer was easy."

The phone buzzes again. Marisol points at your bag with the ice pack, delighted with herself, eyebrows halfway up her hairline. "That is how every story about a secret lover begins."

"It's probably Lulu."

"Your Manager calls when she wants to destroy your peace. She doesn't email." A beat, considering. "Suspicious."

The phone goes still.

You finish removing the tape, inspect the reddened skin beneath it, and begin packing your things. By the time you've changed into wool trousers and a black sweater, Marisol has negotiated herself into one drink, ankle propped on a second chair, looking entirely too pleased with the compromise.

You make her promise to send a picture of the swelling before bed.

She calls you emotionally repressed, cheerfully, like it's a compliment.

You tell her to use compression.

At the stage door, Sophie is still standing with her mother beneath the yellow spill of the theater lights, staring at the signature on her program like it might fade if she looks away too long.

You pretend not to see. You are good at that when necessary.

December in New York insists on being cold, in the specific, theatrical way certain people insist on being difficult. The walk home starts to feel less like six blocks and more like an episode of survivor. A wind that finds the gap at your collar no matter how you angle yourself against it, breath fogging under streetlights strung with wreaths the size of tires. But you still insist on walking. Storefronts glow gold and red down the avenue. Somewhere behind a lit window, a family is doing the things families apparently do this time of year — a tree half-trimmed, someone's kid pressed to the glass, the noise of people who like each other enough to be loud about it. You walk past three different apartments with their curtains open just enough to see it happening.

Your own family's version of a holiday gathering tends to involve a conference room, a shared calendar, and at least one attorney present to make sure nobody's version of "jolly" contradicts anyone's trust agreement.

Your mother is in Gstaad. Your father is wherever your father currently is. You stopped expecting a tree by the time you were nine and stopped minding somewhere shortly after that, or told yourself you had, which by now amounts to roughly the same thing.

The apartment is on the eleventh floor of a prewar building on the Upper East Side that your grandmother has owned outright since before your mother was born — high ceilings, crown molding nobody makes anymore, a view of a sliver of the park if you stand at exactly the right angle in the kitchen.

You have never had to think about rent in your life and you don't pretend otherwise; it would be its own kind of performance, and you don't do those. It's simply a fact of the architecture of your life, the way perfect pitch is a fact for some people. You didn't earn it. You also didn't apologize for it. Both things are just true.

Lulu is sitting at the kitchen island when you get home, surrounded by open folders, colored tabs, and the remains of what appears to have been a violent encounter with a container of pad thai.

She does not look up when you enter.

"You're late." Lulu doesn't look up, but her voice does the thing it always does when she's already three moves ahead of you, half-distracted, half a challenge.

"It's twelve fourteen."

"You usually reject human connection faster." A small, satisfied smile, still aimed at her folders.

"Marisol's ankle was swollen."

"Of course it was." Lulu says it the way you'd acknowledge weather — inevitable, mildly interesting, not worth further comment.

You hang your coat and glance at the folders spread across the island like evidence at a crime scene, organized with a precision that only Lulu is capable of imposing on chaos. Three are familiar. One is new.

"No."

Lulu finally looks up, chopsticks paused mid-air, eyebrows lifting with delight because you know she's been waiting all night for exactly this opening. "You don't even know which one I was going to show you."

"The red tab is the film."

"It's Toronto." She says it like the city alone should settle the argument, like you're supposed to be dazzled into agreement.

"No."

"The director won an award." A little more insistent now, leaning forward on her elbows.

"For directing. Not choreography."

"They're offering executive credit."

"They want my name on promotional material while someone else tells actors to move vaguely in rhythm."

Lulu closes the folder without protest, entirely unbothered, already three steps ahead in her own head — she never fights for a pitch longer than it takes to gauge whether it's dead. "The green one?"

"Two years."

"In Europe." Said hopefully, like geography might tip the scales.

"Still two years."

"The revival?" Her voice softens slightly here, testing, because she already half-knows the answer to this one too.

"I danced that role when I was twenty-three."

"You would be choreographing it." A small, careful point. She's not conceding yet.

"I would be rearranging furniture in a house I already know."

Something in Lulu's face shifts at that — not defeat exactly, more like she's just caught something she wasn't fishing for. She doesn't push. She just watches you for a second too long, the way she does when she's decided something is worth being gentle about instead of winning.

She watches you put your bag on the counter, something assessing in her expression now, the look of a woman doing math she isn't ready to say out loud yet.

"You're bored."

"I'm tired."

"You're bored and tired. They're different diseases."

"I'm not bored."

"You corrected the spacing in the finale last Thursday."

"The spacing was wrong."

"You were performing in it."

"I had time."

"That," Lulu says, pointing a chopstick at you like a gavel, "is not the defense you think it is."

You open the refrigerator. She has stocked it, because she knows the contents of your refrigerator are reduced to sparkling water, mustard, and half a lemon by the end of every performance week.

There is a labeled container on the top shelf.

EAT THIS BEFORE YOU DECIDE COFFEE IS DINNER.

You take it out without commenting.

Lulu smiles down at the folders, pleased with herself in the specific way she gets pleased when she's already won something and is simply waiting for you to notice.

"You're welcome."

"I didn't say anything."

"You took the container. We've been friends eight years. That was practically a sonnet."

You place it in the microwave.

Luisa Reyes has managed your career for four years and your life for considerably longer, although she disputes this description whenever contracts are due and embraces it whenever you are making a bad decision. She danced until her right knee made the choice for her, rebuilt herself with a speed that frightened everyone who loved her, and now runs your calendar with the efficiency of an air-traffic controller operating under active threat.

She is also the only person alive permitted to call you an idiot more than once in the same conversation.

Your phone vibrates again.

Lulu's attention moves to it, quick and unmistakable, like a bird catching motion in its periphery.

You watch your own phone buzz on the counter and know, with the specific certainty of someone who has spent seven years refusing to forget a name, exactly whose it is.

You do not want Lulu anywhere near this information. Not because it's a thing. It is, categorically, not a thing. It's an email, unread by choice, from a man you last spoke to seven years ago, and the fact that you could still describe the exact weight of his voice if someone asked is simply a detail of memory, not evidence of anything. But Lulu has a talent for taking a non-thing and turning it, through sheer force of interest, into an event with its own timeline. You have seen her do it to smaller material than this.

So you turn the phone face-down, too fast, and know immediately it was the wrong move.

"What?"

"Nothing." You say it too quickly for it to land as nothing.

"You have been home forty seconds and have already hidden your phone." Lulu's eyes track the motion like she's clocking evidence, chopsticks abandoned entirely now.

"I turned it over."

"Like a woman with nothing to hide." One eyebrow climbs, slow and merciless.

"I have nothing to hide."

"Wonderful." She holds out her hand, palm up, utterly serene, she knows she's already won and is simply enjoying the formality of asking. "Give it to me."

"No."

"Then we have identified a hidden thing." She says it gently, almost kindly, which is somehow worse than if she'd gloated.

The microwave beeps. You use it as cover — turning away, retrieving the container, buying yourself four seconds you don't actually need.

Lulu keeps her hand extended anyway, patient, entirely willing to wait you out. She has waited you out before, over bigger things than this. She will, apparently, wait you out over this too, and you already know — with the same certainty you know a turn is late before the dancer's even landed it — that you are not going to win this one.

"You have contracts to review," you say.

"I reviewed them. You rejected them through color-coded osmosis." Lulu says this with the weary patience of a woman explaining gravity to someone who keeps falling up.

"I'm eating."

"You are stalling." She points her chopsticks at you like an accusation.

"I am chewing."

"You haven't taken a bite."

You look down at the fork in your hand, hovering exactly where it's been for the last thirty seconds. She's right, which is somehow more irritating than if she'd simply been wrong. You stab a piece of chicken with more force than the chicken has earned.

Lulu leans back in her chair, arms crossed, the particular satisfaction of someone who has just watched her opponent walk directly into the trap she set. "You're unbearable."

"I'm excellent. This is why you pay me."

"My family office pays you." You say family office the way other people say the government — with a small eye roll built in.

"Right. Thank your grandfather for me."

"He's dead."

"And yet, still contributing." You keep your face perfectly straight when she says it, which is what finally breaks her — a startled laugh she tries and fails to swallow, hand flying up to cover her mouth like she can stuff it back in.

You take a bite so you do not laugh either. It doesn't entirely work.

Your phone buzzes again against the stone countertop, loud in the small silence left behind by her laugh.

Lulu's eyes cut toward it immediately, sharp and delighted, then back at you, then back at the phone — the exact rhythm of someone watching a rehearsal room where she can already tell something's about to go wrong before anyone else has clocked it, and is thoroughly enjoying the anticipation.

"Is someone dying?"

"No."

"Are they threatening litigation?"

"No."

"Did you accidentally join a cult?" She asks this one completely seriously, like it's a real and recurring risk in your life.

"Not recently."

"Then who has sent you" — she leans across the island, craning for the screen, entirely without shame about it — "seven emails?"

You pick up the phone, fast.

Too late. She's already seen enough.

Her eyes narrow, the gleeful kind of narrow, a bloodhound catching a scent. "HYBE? As in the K-pop company, HYBE?"

"It's work."

"HYBE does not usually email you seven times in 40 minutes unless you've kidnapped an entire boyband." She says it like a woman citing case law.

"It's not HYBE."

The answer comes out before you can stop it — too fast, too specific, and you watch the exact moment it lands, Lulu's whole face going still and delighted at once, like a cat that has just heard a can opener from two rooms away.

That is the problem with spending eight years beside someone who used to make her living reading bodies for a stage. Lulu does not need a confession. She just needs one badly chosen verb, and you have just handed her one, gift-wrapped, with a bow.

"Who is it?"

"No one."

"A specific no one or a general no one?" She's grinning now, fully, chin propped on her hand, in absolutely no hurry to let this go.

You unlock the phone because refusing to look at it has become more conspicuous than looking.

Seven messages sit beneath the same thread.

The first arrived eleven days ago from an official HYBE address. Formal subject line. Formal introduction. Formal description of a privately funded dance center and resident company in Seoul. They wanted someone to help develop the artistic program, build the choreography department, train the inaugural ensemble, and consult on portions of an upcoming tour.

You had read it twice. Then archived it.

The second arrived today.

This time, the signature at the bottom was personal.

Park Jimin. Of BTS

As if there were another one.

As if your body hadn't already recognized the name a full second before your brain caught up and supplied the rest of it — the group, the stage, the quality of a man who has spent a decade being watched by more people than most countries have citizens, standing in a rehearsal room in Paris seven years ago telling you your turn was late when it was not late, it was simply not the turn he would have done.

You had archived that one too.

This did not stop him.

"What kind of work?" Lulu asks.

You open the first message and slide the phone across the island.

She reads quickly, eyes flicking down the screen with the speed of someone who's skimmed a thousand contracts and knows exactly where the important numbers live. Her eyes pause at the salary.

Actually pause — stop scrolling, go back up, read it again like she thinks she misplaced a decimal.

"That is offensive."

"Yes."

"I mean offensively high." She sets the phone down flat on the counter, very carefully, like it might be worth something and she doesn't want to be the one who drops it.

"I know."

"He is offering you more money than God." She says it with real reverence, the tone usually reserved for describing someone's engagement ring.

"God has never had to negotiate with HYBE's legal team."

"No," Lulu agrees, delighted, "God's never had to do a lot of things. Must be nice." She sets the phone down flat on the counter, still shaking her head at the number.

"That continues to be irrelevant." You say it flatly, but Lulu's already laughing under her breath, shaking her head at you, the specific laugh she saves for the very small percentage of your sentences that are, technically, indefensible.

Lulu scrolls to the bottom. Then back up. Then down again, mouth pressing into a shape that means she is doing arithmetic she isn't ready to announce.

"Park Jimin."

You concentrate on the food.

"Personally led by Park Jimin," she reads aloud. "Park Jimin will oversee the creative direction. Park Jimin has personally requested—"

"I can read."

"Apparently you can also ignore one of the most famous men on earth with an efficiency I find deeply inspiring."

"He's not asking as one of the most famous men on earth."

Lulu's thumb stops over the screen.

There it is again. The badly chosen verb.

Her eyes lift very slowly, sharp now, delighted in the specific way she gets delighted right before she ruins your evening.

"How is he asking?"

You take the phone back.

The second email is shorter than the first.

I wanted to contact you myself. This is not an endorsement arrangement, and I am not looking for someone who will lend their name to the center and leave. I want someone who can help me build it properly.

The third includes a link to an interview you gave six months ago about choreographer ownership and dancer longevity.

You remember the interview. The publication had a small circulation outside the dance world. Your mother had not read it.

Jimin had.

I agree with what you said about companies treating dancers as temporary equipment. I don't want to build another place that does that.

You had stared at that line longer than the others. You are not going to tell Lulu that. You are barely willing to tell yourself that.

The fourth email arrived after you opened the third and failed to respond.

I know you saw the first three.

Lulu reads it over your shoulder, eyebrows arching.

"Oh, I like him."

"You don't know him."

"No, but I support his commitment to the bit."

"He is not funny."

"That sounded personal."

"It was factual."

The fifth email is the longest. You have read it four times.

I have met with other choreographers. They are talented. They also agree with everything I say before I finish saying it. I cannot build this with someone who agrees with me because of my name. I need someone who will tell me when an idea is bad, even if I've already spent money on it. Especially then. You are the only person I know who would enjoy doing that.

You reach for the phone before Lulu gets to the next line.

She catches your wrist, quick, delighted, entirely without mercy.

"Absolutely not."

"Lulu."

She reads aloud.

I also think you are the only person who can help me make this what it should be.

Something small and traitorous shifts beneath your ribs.

It did the first time too. In a rehearsal room in Paris, seven years ago, when he looked at you like you were the only correction in the room worth listening to and then spent three weeks pretending he hadn't meant it that way.

Not because he called you talented. People have been calling you talented since you were too young to understand that talent is usually the least interesting thing about an artist.

Because he said only.

Because Park Jimin, who once spent three weeks contradicting every correction you gave him on principle, has spent seven years becoming one of the most exacting performers in the world and has still decided there is something he cannot do without you.

Lulu looks at your face, reading it the way she reads everything — instantly, without asking permission.

You remove your wrist from her hand.

"It's manipulative."

"It's effective."

"That doesn't make it less manipulative."

"It usually does in marketing."

"It's not marketing."

Lulu's smile arrives slowly, the particular smile that means she has just decided something about your evening that you have not yet agreed to.

"No," she says. "I don't think it is."

You open the sixth email.

It arrived 20 minutes ago.

For the avoidance of doubt, Paris does not need to be discussed. It has nothing to do with the offer.

Lulu stops breathing.

You lock the phone.

She blinks at you, delighted, predatory, already halfway out of her chair.

"No."

"Luisa."

"I am going to ignore you just called me my full government name. Unlock it."

"I'm going to bed."

"Unlock the phone."

"You have the important information."

"I have the word Paris and your face doing something I have not seen since—"

"You haven't seen my face do anything."

"Your face has filed for political asylum."

You stand, carrying the container toward the sink.

Lulu follows you around the island, quick on her feet even in socks, the particular energy of a woman who smells a story and has never once in her life let one go unfinished.

"Is he Paris?"

"That is not a complete question."

"Is Park Jimin the man from Paris?"

"There was no man from Paris."

"You went to a private dance retreat in France seven years ago, came home furious, refused to discuss one particular dancer, and watched every performance he posted for the next six months."

You turn.

"I did not."

"You used my laptop."

"Once."

"You were still logged into your account."

"That proves nothing."

"It proved his name, but I was respecting your privacy." She says this with the particular gravity of a woman who has clearly been sitting on it for years. "I thought maybe you were becoming an ARMY. I thought, okay, she likes their music, that's normal, half the world likes the music. And then I did the math — the dates, the way you got quiet for a week after you came back from France, the fact that you never once mentioned his name out loud but somehow knew his tour schedule — and I decided some things are not my business until you make them my business."

"There is no math."

"There is extensive math. I minored in it."

"You minored in dance."

"I contain multitudes."

You turn back to the sink so she cannot watch your face do whatever it is currently doing.

He wasn't — you correct yourself, silently, because there is no version of this you are willing to say aloud, even to Lulu, even at midnight, even after eight years of her knowing you better than most people who share your blood.

He is Park Jimin.

Was, seven years ago, a twenty-three-year-old with something to prove and a body that argued with every correction you gave him on principle, in a rehearsal room in Paris that smelled like rosin and cold spray, where you disliked him within eleven minutes of meeting him and disliked him more with every week that followed, right up until the week you stopped disliking him in any way that was useful to either of you.

You have never discussed what happened after that. Not with him — you have not spoken one real word to him in seven years, not once, not at an awards show you both happened to attend, not through any mutual acquaintance foolish enough to try to bridge the gap. And not really with Lulu either, though she has clearly built her own theory of the case out of six months of suspicious internet activity and a laptop you forgot to log out of.

You have watched his career since. Out of spite. That is the version you have always told yourself, and you intend to keep telling yourself that version for as long as it remains structurally sound, which — you are aware — has been considerably longer than spite usually lasts.

The uncomfortable truth, the one you are not saying out loud in your own kitchen at midnight, is that a man does not send seven emails to someone he successfully forgot. And you have a reasonably confident suspicion, based on nothing you could defend in a court of law, that he has been keeping an equally detailed, equally denied account of you for exactly as long.

The email chain currently sitting on your phone is not really a job offer.

It's a confirmation.

The phone vibrates in your hand.

Both of you look down.

The last email has arrived.

There is no formal subject line this time. No company language. No careful explanation of the center, the company, the contract, or the reason he has decided to break seven years of mutually enforced silence.

Just one word.

Please.

Lulu reads it beside you.

For once, she does not immediately say anything.

The apartment hums around the silence — the refrigerator motor, the pipes knocking somewhere inside the old walls, a taxi leaning on its horn eleven floors below. Your food is getting cold in the sink. Your body still carries the show in small places: adhesive at the base of your neck, rosin between your toes, the ache beneath your right knee.

You look at the word again.

Jimin does not ask twice.

At least, the version of him you knew did not. The twenty-three-year-old who would repeat the same turn until his feet bled but would rather lose a limb than admit he needed help. The man who could charm an entire room and still bristle whenever you looked at him for half a second too long, as though you had found a door he did not remember leaving open.

Seven years, and apparently he has learned how to ask.

Or he has become desperate enough to try.

Lulu nudges your shoulder, gentler now, some of the delight softening into something more serious.

"He said please."

"I can read."

"In writing."

"Yes."

"Save that for the divorce attorney."

You turn your head.

"As If."

"You know what I mean."

Unfortunately, you do.

You should archive it.

The job would mean moving to Seoul with almost no preparation. It would mean leaving Broadway before you have properly decided what comes next. It would mean placing yourself in a studio with a man you have spent seven years insisting, mostly to yourself, that you no longer think about.

It would also mean building something from the floor up. A real company. A real program. The kind of work none of the folders on the island had managed to offer.

Something difficult enough that you might fail at it.

Something he believes only you can do.

Lulu watches you open the reply window, arms crossed, and for once says nothing — just watches, the way she watches you before a show, when there's nothing left to fix and the only thing left to do is see what you do with it.

"I am not accepting," you say.

"Of course not."

"I'm requesting the full proposal."

"Naturally."

"This is a professional decision."

"Everything about your face agrees."

You begin typing.

Send me the complete artistic plan, operating structure, rehearsal schedule, and the actual authority attached to the role. Not the version written by your legal team.

You pause.

Then add:

And if you mention Paris again, the answer is no.

Lulu reads over your shoulder.

"You know that mentioning Paris in the sentence forbidding him from mentioning Paris still counts as mentioning Paris."

You press send.

"Go home, Lulu."

"I live here when your life gets interesting."

"It isn't interesting."

Your phone registers the email as delivered.

Three dots appear almost immediately beneath it.

Lulu sees them.

You see them.

Neither of you comments.

You have always known when someone is performing.

The problem with Park Jimin has never been that you cannot tell.

The problem is that he has always known when you are too.

It is considerably harder to pretend you are indifferent to a man when his face is forty feet tall.

You discover this before you have technically entered Seoul.

The airport has been warning you for several hundred meters. Seven faces rotate across illuminated screens above baggage claim, disappear behind advertisements for cosmetics and credit cards, then return in coordinated black tailoring beneath the announcement of BTS’s first full-group comeback in four years. Their music follows you through customs at a volume low enough to qualify as ambiance and high enough to make escape impossible. By the time you step outside, Park Jimin has attempted to sell you a phone, a duty-free fragrance, and something involving a bank account you are not eligible to open.

You lower your sunglasses despite the fact that it is February and the sky has the exhausted grey of a city that has not seen direct sunlight in days.

Beside you, Lulu wheels two suitcases through the automatic doors and stops.

“Oh,” she says.

You keep walking.

“Y/N—”

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You inhaled with intent.”

“I just think you should prepare yourself.”

“For what?”

Lulu points.

A bus moves through the airport traffic lane, wrapped from end to end in a comeback advertisement. Jungkook occupies the back third. Taehyung and Jin are somewhere in the middle. Jimin’s face covers the section directly beside you, enlarged to the point that one eye is nearly the size of your head.

He is looking over his shoulder at the camera with his mouth parted and his hair falling across his forehead in a way that probably required twelve people and a wind machine to appear accidental.

The bus pauses at the light.

His enormous face pauses with it.

Lulu looks from the bus to you.

You look straight ahead.

"Oh, this is going to be so much worse than I thought." Lulu says it slowly, drawing it out, watching your face like she's reading a scoreboard.

"I don't know what you mean." You keep your eyes fixed pointedly on the crosswalk light, which has not changed, and will apparently take its time about it.

"Your face."

"My face is fine." It is not fine. You are aware it is not fine. This does not help.

"Your face just saw a ghost with excellent bone structure and beautiful lips." She's grinning now, delighted, tilting her head to get a better angle on whatever your expression is currently doing.

"He looks ridiculous." You say it too fast, too flat, the specific overcorrection defending a position you know is already lost.

"He looks expensive." Lulu tips her chin toward the bus, entirely unbothered, like she's appraising a painting rather than a forty-foot photograph of a man you have spent seven years insisting you don't think about.

"He is advertising public transportation."

"He is advertising an album. The public transportation is carrying his face." She says this with the patient authority of someone explaining a very simple concept to a child.

The light changes. The bus pulls away, taking Jimin's left eye with it, and you feel your shoulders drop half an inch you didn't know you were holding.

You release the handle of your suitcase only long enough to adjust the cuff of your coat — a small, precise motion, entirely unnecessary, the kind of thing your hands do when they need something to be busy with.

Lulu watches this. Watches all of it, actually, waiting for exactly this reaction since the plane landed.

"You're nervous."

"I have been on a plane for fourteen hours." You say it like it settles the matter.

"You flew first class." She raises an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced.

"Time still passed."

"You slept for nine of those hours." A small, satisfied smile now, building toward something.

"I rested my eyes."

"You drooled on a pillow that probably cost more than my first car." She's fully grinning now, arms crossed, clearly enjoying herself far too much.

"I did not drool."

"I took a picture." She says it with the calm confidence of someone holding evidence and in absolutely no rush to produce it.

You turn to her.

She smiles brightly and begins walking toward the line of waiting cars.

The cold reaches through your coat as soon as you step beyond the shelter of the terminal. Seoul smells like jet fuel, winter air, and coffee from the kiosk near the taxi stand. Drivers hold signs in gloved hands. People move around you with luggage and phones and the contained urgency of arrivals. You have been here before for work, but never for long enough to learn the city beyond studios, hotels, and the interiors of company vans.

Never when Park Jimin was waiting somewhere inside it.

Not waiting for you personally, you remind yourself.

He has a project. You have a contract. The fact that he sent seven emails to secure that contract does not change its professional nature.

The driver waiting beneath your name bows and reaches for your luggage. Lulu hands hers over before you can stop her, then climbs into the back of the black van and slides across the seat.

You settle beside her.

The car has barely left the airport when she begins counting.

“One.”

You look out the window.

A BTS advertisement covers the side of a building near the expressway.

“Two.”

A digital billboard changes from a skincare campaign to all seven members walking toward the camera.

“Don’t.”

“I’m collecting data.”

“You’re being annoying.”

“These are not mutually exclusive activities.”

The city gathers around the windows as the van carries you farther from the airport. Bridges, apartment towers, traffic pressed into narrow lanes. Comeback posters appear at bus stops and convenience stores. Their faces cover the glass outside a department store. A coffee shop has placed cardboard cutouts near the entrance. Someone has decorated a street-facing window with purple lights and seven names spelled in silver lettering.

“This is objectively insane,” Lulu says.

“They are famous.”

“I understood that concept academically.”

“You manage performers.”

“I manage dancers. Nobody has ever wrapped your face around a city bus.”

“I would sue.”

“You would approve the final image and then sue.”

You pretend not to hear her.

Another bus passes in the opposite direction. This one carries the full group, although Jimin is closest to the window again, smiling as though he knows you are trapped in traffic beside his face.

You hate the photograph.

You have seen it before.

It appeared online three weeks ago. You had been awake after a show, stretching your hip on the living-room floor, when the first promotional images were released. You had looked at the group photographs because the costume construction was interesting. Then at the individual photographs because understanding the visual direction required context.

Then at Jimin’s photograph three times because the lighting was strange.

You had not saved it.

You had, apparently, committed it to memory.

Lulu turns in her seat.

“How much did you actually know?”

“About what?”

She gestures at the city outside. “This.”

“I know who BTS are.”

“That was not the question.”

“They’re one of the largest music acts in the world.”

“Still not the question.”

You look at her.

Lulu folds her hands in her lap. “When you met him, was he already this?”

Your attention returns to the window.

The honest answer is yes.

The more honest answer is that you had refused to care.

Paris had been too hot that summer.

Not pleasantly warm — hot enough that the old studio windows stayed open all day and accomplished nothing beyond letting traffic noise interfere with the music. Twenty-four dancers, twelve companies, six weeks of contemporary training that cost enough to require justification.

Park Jimin arrived forty minutes late on the second morning, baseball cap on, two apologetic staff members trailing behind, the attention of the entire room following him without being asked to.

You knew the type. Trained young, praised often, accustomed to rooms rearranging themselves around him. You did not expect to like him. You were, initially, entirely correct.

"You don't like me," he said, day nine, standing beside you at the barre like the observation cost him nothing.

"I don't know you."

"Is that different?"

It should have stayed that simple. It did not.

He stayed after rehearsal every night, taping his own ankle, repeating combinations until his shirt darkened, working like being second-best in any room was a private emergency. You started answering his questions. He started listening to your corrections instead of just charming his way past them. Weeks in, you caught yourself doing the thing you'd promised yourself you wouldn't — thinking of him not as an idol who danced, but as a dancer who happened to be famous.

That distinction turned out to be the whole problem.

There was a duet neither of you could finish. A studio at eleven at night, everyone else gone, rain against the high windows. There was a moment neither of you anticipated the other, for once, instead of fighting for the lead.

You are not thinking about what happened after that. You have not thought about it for seven years.

What you will allow yourself to remember is the morning after — a rehearsal, an audience of twenty-two dancers who did not need to hear what they heard, and a sentence Jimin said that turned something private into entertainment for an entire company. You said something back. Something aimed precisely enough to land exactly where you wanted it to.

Neither of you apologized. The truce was gone before lunch.

He went back to Seoul. You went back to New York. You told yourself you hated him. It was simpler than admitting how much you'd respected him before he ruined it — and infinitely simpler than admitting that hatred, it turned out, was not incompatible with knowing exactly how someone took their coffee, or how they liked to be touched.

"Your eye is twitching."

You blink and find Lulu watching you from the other side of the van, chin propped on her fist, studying your face with the unhurried focus of someone who has already decided this is going to be the highlight of her week.

"It is not."

"It absolutely is." She says it with real satisfaction, like a doctor confirming a diagnosis she's been hoping for.

The city moves beyond her shoulder. Another billboard. Another comeback announcement. All seven members in profile this time, Jimin standing near the center, jaw doing something unreasonable in fifty-foot lighting.

Lulu follows your gaze before you can redirect it. Her whole face changes — eyebrows up, mouth already curving into the specific shape it takes right before she says something you'll regret her saying out loud.

"Did you sleep with him?"

You turn so fast the seatbelt catches against your coat, half-choking you on your own scarf.

The driver's eyes remain professionally, diplomatically fixed on the road, a man who has clearly transported worse conversations than this one and intends to survive this one the same way.

"Could you lower your voice?"

"He doesn't speak English."

"You don't know that."

Lulu leans toward the front seat, entirely undeterred, already treating this like due diligence. "Sir, do you speak English?"

The driver meets her eyes in the rearview mirror, utterly unbothered.

"A little."

"Wonderful," you say, dragging a hand down your face. "Excellent work, everyone."

Lulu smiles at him, apologetic and completely insincere, and settles back into her seat like she's just gathered useful intel. "So?"

"This is not a conversation for the car."

"That is a yes." She says it triumphantly, pointing at you like she's just solved a case.

"It is not anything."

"You have spent seven years referring to Paris like it was a natural disaster." She ticks it off on her fingers, delighted with her own memory. "Hurricane. Earthquake. 'The incident.' I have heard you call it the incident, Y/N."

"It was an intensive."

"Did the intensive have abs?"

You look out the window again, jaw tight, refusing to dignify that with anything.

Lulu presses both hands over her mouth, eyes going wide over the top of them, the exact expression of someone watching a plot twist unfold in real time. "Oh my God."

"Please stop."

"You slept with Park Jimin." Muffled, through her fingers, entirely too gleeful for someone supposedly scandalized.

"Lower your voice."

"You slept with the man on the bus."

"You have officially gone insane."

"That does not make the information less significant." She drops her hands, fully invested now, twisted sideways in her seat to face you properly.

"It happened once."

"Once?" Her eyebrows climb higher, delighted by the specificity, like you've handed her a gift she wasn't expecting to unwrap this early in the ride.

You say nothing. You look, very deliberately, at absolutely nothing out the window.

Lulu's hands slowly lower, and something in her expression shifts — the teasing easing back just slightly, replaced by the sharper, more attentive look she gets when she's actually paying attention instead of performing outrage for sport.

"Y/N."

"It was seven years ago."

"That was not the question."

"It was a long night."

Her eyes close briefly, like she's receiving spiritual guidance from somewhere above the van's ceiling. When she opens them again, something has clicked into place.

"And then he hurt your feelings."

"He did not hurt my feelings."

"You refused to hear his name for almost a decade." She's counting on her fingers again, methodical now, building a case.

"I have heard his name."

"You changed the radio station in a dentist's office."

"I didn't like the song."

"You don't speak Korean."

"I can still dislike production choices." You say it with total conviction, chin lifted, daring her to argue.

Lulu studies you for several seconds, and for once, doesn't. She just watches — really watches, the amusement settling into something quieter — and then she reaches across the seat and squeezes your knee.

The gesture is so unexpectedly gentle that you stop mid-breath, halfway through preparing your next defense, and just let her hold on for a second.

"I'm going to destroy him," she says. Calm. Certain. Like she's confirming dinner reservations.

You stare at her.

"With professionalism," she adds, entirely serious, releasing your knee to sit back with her arms crossed. "I represent you now. I have standards."

"You are not destroying my employer."

"He's not your employer. Technically the company is."

"The center is privately funded by him."

"Then I will destroy him while respecting the corporate structure." She says it like this is obviously the reasonable compromise, nodding once like the matter's settled.

You pull your sunglasses down over your eyes, done negotiating.

Lulu pats your knee once more, entirely too pleased with herself.

"Don't worry. I'll be subtle."

"That is the least reassuring sentence you've ever said."

The suite has two bedrooms, a living room larger than your first New York apartment, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river, the city smeared gold and glass below. It is, in the specific way of hotel rooms designed for people who never see the bill, entirely too much.

There are flowers on the dining table.

White lilies.

Not orchids. Not roses. Not the safe, anonymous arrangement any competent assistant would order for a business trip. White lilies, exactly the way you've ordered them for yourself since you were nineteen years old and finally had your own apartment to fill with them, a fact you cannot remember ever telling him, a fact you're fairly certain you never told him, which means he noticed. Once. Seven years ago. And filed it away.

There's a card tucked between the stems.

You tell yourself you're not going to read it. You read it.

I remembered. I hope that's still true.

Something in your chest does something you don't have a polite word for. You stand very still with the card between two fingers, willing it to mean nothing, willing yourself to believe it's coincidence — a devastating coincidence, the worst kind, the kind that requires him to have thought about you specifically enough to remember a detail you'd have sworn you never gave him.

Lulu watches you read it twice. She doesn't say anything, which is somehow worse than if she had.

You shower. Wash fourteen hours of airplane air off your skin, stand under water hot enough to loosen the knot between your shoulders, and by the time you're back in the bedroom in a robe, Lulu has opened three suitcases and laid your clothes across the bed like she's staging a trial.

"Our car's at seven-thirty," you say. "This is a contract meeting."

"Mhm." Lulu isn't listening. She's holding up the black dress — the one with almost no back — against her own body, studying it in the mirror with the focus of a general reviewing artillery.

"Absolutely not."

"It says you take contracts very seriously."

"It says I have no internal organs."

"It says your organs are private." She drops it onto the bed, already victorious.

You reach for the navy suit folded beside it. She slaps your hand away without even looking.

"He spent seven years knowing he hurt you and still put his face on public transportation."

"I don't think the bus placement has anything to do with me."

"Don't defend him." She holds the dress out, arms extended, patient as a woman with all the time in the world and none of your objections. "You flew across the planet after he begged you in writing seven times. He thinks he won."

"It's a job."

"He thinks he won."

You look at the dress. Black silk, clean lines, a back that exists mostly as a technicality. You know, with the flat certainty of someone who has worn it before, exactly what it does to a room.

You take it anyway.

Lulu's smile turns unbearable. "This doesn't mean anything," you tell her.

"Of course not."

Twenty minutes later you step out of the bathroom. The dress fits the way it always has — maybe better, your body having spent seven years quietly getting even more furious on your behalf. Lulu turns from the mirror, lipstick still raised halfway to her mouth, and just — stops.

"Oh," she says. "He's going to hate you."

"That's the goal."

"Mhm."

You catch your own reflection over her shoulder and don't entirely recognize the effect — hair pinned back, bare shoulders, the kind of breathtaking that isn't trying to be anything, which is exactly what makes it work. Nothing about it says seven years. Everything about it says you should have thought about this before you sent the seventh email.

Lulu grabs her coat, tosses yours at you, and heads for the door with the specific energy of a woman preparing for battle she has no personal stake in and every intention of enjoying.

"Alright, that is a revenge dress." she announces, one hand on the doorframe, chin lifted like she's about to lead a cavalry charge. "Let's go, Lady Diana. Let's go slay some dragons."

You stare at her.

"That sentence means nothing. Lady Diana didn't slay dragons. Lady Diana was a princess."

"She had presence, Y/N. Work with me."

You're still laughing — helpless, undignified, entirely unplanned — when the elevator doors open downstairs.

This is a professional dinner.

The dress is a coincidence.

You are, demonstrably, lying to yourself about at least one of those things.

And Park Jimin, somewhere across Seoul, is about to learn that seven years have done absolutely nothing to improve your patience.

The restaurant occupies the top floor of a building in Cheongdam, behind an entrance discreet enough to suggest that anyone who needs directions cannot afford to eat there.

The car deposits you beneath a black awning at exactly seven twenty-eight. Lulu steps out first, surveys the entrance, then turns back toward you with the solemn expression of someone preparing to send a close friend into active combat.

“Last chance to fake food poisoning.”

She reaches for your coat before the driver can and holds it while you step onto the pavement. Cold air moves beneath the hem of your dress, sharp against your bare legs. Through the restaurant windows, Seoul glitters in fragments—headlights, glass towers, the reflected glow of advertisements that have followed you across the city all afternoon.

At least none of them are visible from here.

“You look terrifying,” Lulu says, settling the coat over your shoulders.

“Thank you.”

“I meant it lovingly.”

“You usually do.”

“And your ass looks divine.”

“Please develop another interest before we go inside.”

“No.”

The host recognizes your reservation immediately and leads you through a corridor lined with dark wood and low lighting. The restaurant smells faintly of charcoal, citrus, and something expensive being reduced in a copper pan. Private dining rooms sit behind sliding doors, each one far enough apart to keep conversations from travelling.

You almost appreciate the discretion until the host stops outside the last door.

Lulu leans closer.

“Do you need a safe word?”

“For dinner?”

“For him.”

You look at her.

She smiles. “Just checking.”

The private room sits behind a door that slides rather than swings, opening onto floor-to-ceiling windows that hold the whole glittering sprawl of Seoul at night — the kind of view that costs more than most people's rent, offered here like it's incidental.

Park Jimin is standing in front of the table.

One hand is in his pocket. The other checks his watch, an absent, restless motion, like a man who has been ready for twenty minutes and has run out of ways to occupy himself.

He is still blond.

A shade lighter now, pushed back off his forehead instead of falling loose the way it did in Paris, and you find yourself absurdly, uselessly thrown by the difference anyway — the particular golden edge of it catching the window light, softer than you remember, like even his hair has learned some kind of restraint in seven years.

His hair looks like it simply grew this way, like the color was doing him a favor the whole time and nobody told you. It suits him in a way that feels almost unfair. Almost natural. You hate that you notice the difference in under three seconds.

The suit is black, tailored close enough to make the fitting itself sound like a small act of violence — no tie, shirt open at the throat, the kind of quiet, expensive restraint that doesn't announce itself and doesn't need to.

For several seconds, the room becomes inconveniently quiet.

His eyes find you first — not the dress, not the room, you — and something moves across his face before he has time to arrange it into anything more polished. His jaw shifts, almost imperceptibly, the smallest fracture in composure. His lips part around whatever he was about to say to his manager and the words simply don't arrive.

Then his eyes move.

Not far. Not obviously. Far enough that you clock it — the exact half-second his attention drops to the neckline of the dress, follows the line of black silk down, and catches somewhere it has no professional business catching before returning, with visible effort, to your face.

Personal victory arrives warm and immediate beneath your ribs.

You keep your expression perfectly neutral. You have had considerably more practice at that than he apparently has.

Beside him, someone clears their throat — a manager, hovering a respectful two feet back — and Jimin blinks like he's been startled out of somewhere private.

Then he smiles.

There it is. The exact smile that once convinced twenty-two dancers in Paris that language was optional, that a man could get away with anything as long as he delivered it with enough sincerity behind the eyes. Older now. More controlled. Sharpened by seven years of knowing precisely what it does to a room, and precisely when to spend it.

"I'm so glad you're here, Y/N."

Your name doesn't just leave his mouth. It rolls off his tongue slow and deliberate, landing somewhere between a secret and a confession, like he's been waiting seven years for a reason to say it out loud again and has decided, apparently, to make the most of it.

Shameless. Utterly unrepentant.

Seven years, and he has not changed even slightly.

His English is almost fluent.

You resent this immediately.

"Jimin."

His gaze drops again, shameless now that he knows you noticed the first time — no attempt to disguise it, no flicker of embarrassment, just an open, unhurried look that lands somewhere south of your collarbone and stays there a beat too long.

"You look—"

"Employed?"

Lulu makes a strangled sound beside you, quickly disguised as a cough.

Jimin's smile widens, slow and unbothered, like your interruption is exactly the response he was hoping to provoke. "I was going to say beautiful."

"That would have been inappropriate for a contract meeting."

"Then I'm glad you interrupted me."

"You usually are."

His manager steps forward before either of you can improve upon the situation, the practiced motion of a man who has clearly done this exact maneuver before — inserting himself at the precise moment a room threatens to combust. He introduces himself in English, polite and careful, bows, welcomes you to Seoul, asks about the flight, says they appreciate you accepting the project on such short notice.

Lulu shakes his hand, entirely pleasant, entirely unarmed-looking, which is how you know she's about to cause a problem.

"We haven't accepted the full project yet."

The manager's smile holds, though something behind his eyes recalibrates. "The contract was signed."

"The preliminary contract was signed."

"It includes the full term."

"Subject to final approval of the artistic structure."

Jimin looks between them, one eyebrow lifting with open interest, like he's watching a match he has no stake in and every intention of enjoying. You look between them too, arms folding loosely, letting Lulu do exactly what you brought her here to do.

His manager turns slightly toward Jimin, positioning himself with such subtle protectiveness that another person might miss it. Lulu moves half a step closer to you with considerably less subtlety, chin lifting, shoulders squaring like she's decided this is a formation now.

Jimin notices. Of course he does. His gaze settles on Lulu, curious, assessing, faintly delighted. "You must be Lulu."

She tilts her head, not blinking. "You must be Paris."

His manager closes his eyes. Only for a moment, recalculating his entire evening.

Jimin looks at you.

You study the arrangement of glassware on the table with great interest.

"Interesting," he says.

"Is it?" Lulu asks, all innocence.

"You've told her about me."

"She has told me almost nothing about you. I formed my opinion from the silence."

"Lulu."

"What? I'm being charming."

"You're threatening the employer."

"I haven't threatened anyone."

Jimin slides one hand into his trouser pocket, mouth curving further, entirely too entertained for a man supposedly under attack. "I feel a little threatened."

"You should."

His manager says something quietly in Korean, low and urgent. Jimin answers without taking his eyes off Lulu, easy and unbothered, and whatever he says makes his manager's mouth tighten as though suppressing either a sigh or a deeply inappropriate laugh.

"What did you say?" Lulu asks.

"That I like you."

"No, you don't."

"I could."

"You hurt my client and best friend's feelings."

The room changes.

Not dramatically. No one stops breathing. No glass breaks. But Jimin's smile loses a fraction of its ease, something flickering behind his eyes that wasn't there a second ago — surprise, maybe, or the beginning of it.

His manager looks at you, quick and searching. Lulu looks at Jimin, entirely unrepentant. You consider, briefly and seriously, walking directly back to New York and changing your emergency contact information.

"I did not say that," you tell her.

"You did not need to."

Jimin's eyes return to yours. The humor is still there, but something else has moved beneath it — something more careful, more exposed than he probably intended to let show in front of three witnesses and a maître d'.

"I didn't know she was hurt."

"You didn't ask," Lulu says.

His manager steps in fast, smooth, practiced. "I think perhaps there has been a misunderstanding about the purpose of tonight."

"Yes," Lulu says. "You think this is dinner. I think this is discovery."

"Lulu."

She raises both hands, the picture of surrender, entirely unconvincing.

Jimin laughs.

It is quiet, unguarded, and far too familiar, a sound that arrives before he seems to have decided to let it, head tipping back slightly, the performance dropping away for one unscripted second.

You look at him.

He is already looking at you, laughter still settling in the corners of his mouth.

"Still bringing someone else to fight for you?" he asks.

Lulu turns toward you slowly, delighted, silent, waiting.

His manager's expression becomes alert, watching you the way you'd watch a match about to be lit.

You fold your arms beneath your coat. "Still confusing basic loyalty with weakness?"

"No." Jimin's gaze flicks toward Lulu, considering, almost fond. "I think she could kill me."

"She has considered it," you say.

"I have a list," Lulu confirms, entirely serious.

His manager straightens, visibly alarmed. "A list?"

"For legal reasons, it is figurative."

Lulu smiles at him, sweet and unbothered.

You are not entirely certain it is figurative.

Jimin steps closer. Not enough to be improper. Enough that the faint scent of his cologne reaches you — something warm beneath the clean edge of citrus, familiar only in the dangerous way certain memories live inside the body before the mind gives them permission. Your pulse does something inconvenient. You do not let it show.

His attention travels over your face, slow, deliberate, cataloguing.

"You cut your hair."

Your hair is longer than it was in Paris. You don't correct him. You let him be wrong, mostly to watch what he does with it.

"You got better at English."

"I practiced."

"Clearly."

"I had motivation."

"Threatening foreign choreographers?"

"Understanding when they insult me."

"You managed without vocabulary."

His mouth curves, something warmer sliding into it. "You noticed."

"I notice distractions."

"And yet. You came."

"You sent seven emails."

"You answered the last one."

"You begged in the last one."

His manager looks at him, alarmed anew. Lulu lights up like she's just been handed the winning lottery numbers, leaning forward with both elbows on the table.

Jimin's expression does not change, carefully composed, chin level — but the tips of his ears begin turning pink beneath his blond hair, a small, involuntary betrayal that no amount of composure can override.

You feel a satisfaction so pure it should probably embarrass you.

It does not.

"In writing," you add.

His manager says his name in Korean with the weary tone of a man discovering new information about his employer in front of hostile witnesses, rubbing at his temple like this evening has aged him considerably.

Jimin finally looks away from you, jaw tightening slightly. "The first six emails were professional."

"The sixth mentioned Paris."

"The sixth clarified that Paris would not be mentioned."

"By mentioning it."

"I was establishing a boundary."

"You don't establish my boundaries."

"I was respecting one."

"You created it."

"You were already going to create it."

"Then you should have waited."

"For what? Email eight?"

Lulu covers her mouth with both hands, shoulders shaking. His manager stares fixedly at the table, a man who has fully checked out and is simply waiting for the meal to end.

You take one step toward Jimin.

He does not move back. If anything, something in his stance settles, like he's been waiting for you to close that particular distance all night.

"You said you would stop after the third."

"You ignored it."

"That was an answer."

"No, that was avoidance."

"You're an expert now?"

"I had seven years to study."

The words leave him easily. Too easily — no performance behind them, none of the practiced ease from thirty seconds ago. For the first time since the door opened, neither of you has a response ready.

Jimin's gaze stays on yours, steady, unguarded in a way that catches you off balance. The room around him softens at the edges — the table, the city lights beyond the windows, your respective guardians standing nearby and silently reconsidering every decision that led to this evening.

Seven years to study.

The line should sound like another joke. It does not, and you both seem to notice it at the same time, a small, mutual falter neither of you acknowledges out loud.

Then his eyes lower to your dress again, and the softness disappears beneath something openly, unapologetically appreciative.

"You wore black."

You glance down as though the color has surprised you. "A remarkable observation. Your English really has improved."

"I remember you wearing black."

"I own several colors."

"Not when you want to win."

Lulu turns away, shoulders shaking harder now, no longer bothering to disguise it as anything else.

You narrow your eyes. "Win what?"

Jimin steps aside, gesturing toward the dining table, unbothered, entirely too pleased with himself.

"You tell me."

The gesture opens his jacket slightly. The shirt beneath it fits close enough that you can see the movement of his breathing. His hair falls across one eye, and he pushes it back with a ringed hand without breaking eye contact, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world to be looked at.

He is flirting with you.

Not the careless, generous flirtation he once distributed across studios and hotel bars, spread thin enough for anyone to catch a piece of it. This is deliberate. Focused. Aimed at you specifically, and far more shameless than it was in Paris because he now possesses both the language and the confidence to make certain you understand every part of it.

You should find it irritating.

You do.

You also become acutely conscious that the back of your dress is almost entirely open.

Jimin's gaze passes over your shoulder, locating the missing fabric. His eyebrows lift, just barely, just enough. The reaction lasts less than a second.

It is enough.

Lulu catches your eye. Her expression says everything.

Divine.

You refuse to give her the satisfaction of agreeing out loud.

His manager moves toward the table and pulls out one of the chairs, apparently deciding the evening has a better chance of surviving if everyone is seated and provided with food.

"We have prepared an agenda," he says.

"Excellent," Lulu answers, already reaching into her bag. "We have revisions."

"Of course you do," Jimin says, resigned and amused in equal measure.

She smiles at him. "You're learning."

He looks at you again, something quieter settling behind his eyes.

"Yes," he says. "But I already knew."

There is something unbearable about the certainty in his voice. As if seven years have not changed anything essential. As if he still knows how you enter a room, how you choose a dress when you intend to make a point, how silence is not the same thing as surrender.

As if you have not spent those same seven years learning him from photographs, performances, interviews, and every piece of work you watched while telling yourself professional curiosity was a sufficient explanation.

His manager gestures toward the table. Lulu does not move. Neither do you.

Jimin glances between the three of you, then exhales through a smile, hands spread slightly, the picture of a man conceding a point he never actually planned to fight.

"Should we take our seats?"

"You first," you say.

"Still don't trust me behind you?"

"I don't trust you anywhere."

"That wasn't true in— before."

His manager makes a small choking sound. Lulu's head snaps toward you, eyebrows somewhere near her hairline.

Jimin's face becomes luminous with satisfaction, the specific look of a man who has just been handed exactly the reaction he wanted.

You smile.

It is not a kind smile.

"This dinner hasn't started," you tell him, "and you're already violating one of my conditions."

"You haven't given me the conditions yet."

"You knew I would have them."

"I wanted you to have them."

You should leave.

Jimin's eyes drop to the open back of the dress. This time, he does not bother pretending otherwise — his gaze lingers, open and unhurried, something unguarded crossing his face before he can smooth it back into something more careful.

The expression on his face is worth the flight.

Worth the billboards.

Almost worth the bus.

You hand the coat to the host and walk past him toward the table, spine straight, chin level, refusing to give him the courtesy of watching you do it.

Behind you, Lulu whispers, "Personal victory," with enough pride to suggest she selected the dress for precisely this outcome.

You take the chair opposite Jimin. He sits across from you, his manager on one side and Lulu on the other, dividing the table into two protective camps that have already declared war without bothering to establish terms.

Jimin reaches for the water, unhurried, watching you over the rim of the glass. "So," he says. "How badly are you planning to make me suffer?"

You unfold your napkin over your lap, not looking up.

"I have three conditions."

His smile returns, slow, delighted, entirely too confident for a man about to hear them.

"Only three?"

"For now."

He leans back in his chair, blond hair brushing the collar of his suit, and looks at you the way nobody else in the room would dare to — not the careful, filtered attention people give a stranger, and not the reverent, distant kind people give a stage. Direct. Unhidden. The look of someone who has decided, somewhere in the last ten minutes, that pretending not to look is no longer worth the effort.

It is going to be a very long night.

You have always known when someone is performing. The body tells the truth eventually — a missed count, a held breath, a pair of dark eyes lingering half a second longer than they should.

Across the table, Park Jimin smiles as though he has nothing to hide.

You know better.

The problem is that, judging by the way he is looking at you, so does he.

And somewhere underneath the conditions you're about to lay out, underneath the seven years and the seven emails and the dress you'll never admit you wore for him, is the quiet, inconvenient fact that you have not finished deciding which one of you is actually winning tonight.

You place your water glass down.

“For the first month, you personally attend every rehearsal connected to the resident company’s inaugural program.”

Jimin’s smile remains.

Author's Note

OMG OMG OMG!! here we have it friends 🖤 the first part of DLAMLT — Jimin's story, in this wonderfully chaotic universe of The B-Side Series. if you're new here, hi!! hello!! come sit, grab a cookie from the back, let me tell you a story

so this is part of a whole collection i'm writing for all seven members, and this is the FOURTH one to be published. we've got What Happens When You Fall, which is Namjoon's (slow burn, medical setting, will absolutely ruin you in the best way), and The Real Thing, which is Yoongi's (a fake dating premise that stopped being fake approximately five minutes in) — both of those are complete!! and i'm currently posting The Space Between Us, which is Jin's (marriage, distance, learning how to come back to someone — that one's going to take its time and it's going to be worth it)

and now: Jimin's

yes, you can absolutely read each story as a total standalone. but they are all interconnected, bc i am apparently a madwoman standing in front of a corkboard with red string connecting seven different men's love lives into one universe and i regret nothing

WITH THAT BEING SAID — if you're not new here, come here, let me kiss your forehead, thank you thank you thank you for following me down every single one of my unhinged rabbit holes. i mean it

confession time: i have discovered that i enjoy writing jimin an EMBARRASSING amount. i am already bias wrecked. send help. actually don't send it, i am having way too much fun over here and i refuse to be saved

also i need to formally go on record that writing dance scenes might be the single hardest thing i have ever done as a writer. and i say this as someone who wrote an entire fic with real orthopedic surgical accuracy in it. bones? fine. tibias? no problem. but describing MOVEMENT, making choreography feel alive on a page instead of just "and then she did a spin" — dear god. have mercy on me. it's humbling in a way very few things are humbling

this was supposed to be a small teaser and i ended up writing the entire first chapter instead, so. that happened. the next part is coming soon, but there's a full schedule you can check HERE for what's dropping when

and if you want to be added to my permanent taglist — you are so welcome here, just send me a DM or drop a comment and i'll add you 🖤