Page 4 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 1-4 (The Residency Boys #6)

“No, because when I text you your full name and Bak’s full name, you’re going to know that I care enough to put in the effort to find out who you are even if I have to work for it.”

Jun’s lips twitched, and his eyes creased. “Are you telling me you’re going to stalk me? That’s like every K-drama ever.”

“Not every K-drama. And it’s not stalking. I’m already talking to you. It’s investigating.”

Jun shook his head. “I like stalking better.”

They laughed.

Jun looked down at the hat, twisting it around in his hands. “Fine. I’ll let you. And…thanks, you know. I just needed. I knew it was stupid, but I needed. And you…you felt safe. I think, I hope…”

“I’ll keep your secret. And I’ll find out the rest of your secrets. But you can ask me anything, well, anything except about my clients. There’s a lot of NDAs in my history.”

Jun nodded, his lips twisting with wry humor. “I know about NDAs.”

Damian held out his hand. He needed to touch Jun one more time, but they were just standing in an alley, hoping to not be seen. He couldn’t do anything here.

“Here’s a train card. Use it and lose it. I’ll buy a new one when I go into the station. You can get back to where you need to go from here, right?”

Jun tapped his head. “I know the station I’m off of. The rest I can figure out.”

“Text me, please. I’ll be worried about you until you do. Your boss sounds awful.”

Jun shrugged. “He has his reasons. I owe him a lot. He’s just overprotective sometimes. But thanks. I’ll text you when it’s safe. Might not be till tonight.”

They bowed their goodbyes, and Damian waved Jun off. He’d give him time to get through so they wouldn’t be seen close together, and then he’d go in and buy a new card. This station at least had that option.

* * *

Jun

Present Day

Jun held his head in his hands, staring down at the statements and figures in front of him.

It was as much as he’d been able to collect, basically just the quarterly earnings statements for himself and copies his bandmates in 5N had let him look over.

Five world tours, nine years of being a debuted group, with regularly charting releases and screaming fans should have led to some sort of cumulative financial success.

Even the loss of the group’s first beloved leader, Rei, and an unconventionally early break for military service hadn’t destroyed them.

Demand for their presence and copies sold of their merch and albums continued to rise.

The payouts to the members, however, had not.

And it made no sense. Jun would make more money if he drove a taxi.

All the other members were somewhat better off, Su-jin in particular, but none of them owed BBB3 money for care and training like he did.

Jun dragged his fingers through his hair, staring at the columns again. Where was the money going? Bak, their manager, wasn’t giving him answers. Jun was scrambling for them on his own, and he certainly didn’t have the training to understand legalese and accounts.

What he had determined was that 5N was under an entity called SP4700Y. For the longest time, he’d thought SP4700Y was just a branch of BBB3, the talent agency in which he was, at that very moment, sitting, but now he was no longer sure.

Now though, he was very sure SP4700Y was not legally part of BBB3, meaning that 5N was also not legally a part of BBB3.

Which was a shock because he’d been told since he was nine years old he worked for BBB3.

Bak always said BBB3 paid him and handled everything for him.

All the publicity for 5N said they were part of the BBB3 agency lineup. So, what did that mean?

Other groups under the BBB3 banner, Jun had discovered, were not paid through SP4700Y. They received their payments directly through BBB3. Only 5N was special.

But why?

And why couldn’t he talk to anyone in SP47000Y?

There was no number and no address that led anywhere.

He hadn’t even been able to get a copy of his contract with BBB3 to see why SP4700Y was paying him.

And he had made zero progress learning who owned SP4700Y.

It appeared though that his contract might be with SP4700Y and perhaps not BBB3. He wasn’t entirely certain.

His debt, the reason his world was crashing down around him—and purportedly everyone else’s debt with him, according to Bak—was to BBB3.

Why he still had debt made no sense. Surely, he would have paid back what they’d spent on him in his six years of training.

He hadn’t even been only a trainee during that time.

He’d been an active talent by the time he was ten, singing, dancing, appearing on shows, and taking roles in TV dramas and commercials.

Bak claimed all the money had been spent on Jun’s education.

Well, Bak certainly had not made sure he could read and understand paperwork. That or it wasn’t meant to be understood.

Jun pulled out his phone, his secret one, pushed in the SIM card, and turned it on.

His passwords had passwords at this point.

The phone itself was blank. He logged into cellular internet, something not associated with BBB3, thanking Gigi in his head for continuing to pay his phone bill.

Nervously, he checked the time. He could probably download the clone of his secret phone and check email one more time.

Maybe one of the attorneys he’d messaged would agree to take him on without a retainer that was beyond his current means to put down.

It wasn’t like he’d been paid recently, at least not into an account he could access.

His latest payments had been held back, and a fraction of “compassion pay” had been released into his bank account.

Well, a new bank account. His old bank account with his savings was currently “being reviewed.” Funny how his usually amiable if stressful relationship with Bak had degraded over the last six months.

And his old bank account would probably stay under review until Bak Gyeong decided Jun would knuckle under.

Jun dropped his head to his desk. Sometimes, it just seemed like he should.

It would make so many people’s lives better, but the idea of doing something like that with a man like that made him want to scrub his skin off preemptively.

Maybe…maybe if he hadn’t had that first eye-opening night with his foreign lawyer, he’d have given in.

If he hadn’t known what intimacy and sharing one’s body with another was supposed to feel like, he might have considered a price he was willing to pay.

He might have treated the demands being made on him as just another publicity assignment or game show appearance with an audience of one.

But he knew now what he’d be giving up.

And he couldn’t. At least not yet.

Somehow, there had to be a way to prove his debt to BBB3 was not the reason the company was going under. Surely someone, somewhere, was messing up, money was being put away into a wrong account, an accounting error, something. Maybe someone in the finance department was skimming the pot.

It was galling. Six months into his attempts to get real answers for the status of what he owed versus how much he had paid down and an itemized listing of how the debt had been accrued in the first place, yet he was no closer to an answer.

All records prior to his time in the military were just missing.

He suspected they’d been sent to his father.

That was who Bak always told him to ask.

Not that his father had left any contact information. Appeals to Bak Gyeong for said contact information had yielded nothing. The man insisted he would not come between his good friend and his son in a personal matter.

But it wasn’t personal. Or maybe it was. He wasn’t even sure anymore. He wasn’t sure he had anything to his entire identity anymore that was personal except for maybe…Damian Sathers.

His phone beeped, and he hurriedly logged into the email he’d been using to message lawyers.

There was just one reply: “Dear Sir, We regret to inform you that we cannot open an investigation on a single individual’s behalf into the financials of a company. If you suspect fraud, we suggest seeking the assistance of the police. We wish you the best.

So much for lawyers, and now so much for forensic accountants. That had been Yohei’s idea. He’d phrased it so carefully too, worried about this response, asking only for his own paperwork to be gone over, but still, door to face.

His messaging app he used just for Damian bounced a notice on the screen.

He opened it up, smiled at the little icon, and started to read.

Noise at the end of the hall startled him.

Without even turning off the phone, he yanked out the SIM card, ripped the battery free, and tossed the phone in a drawer, shoving the SIM into his house shoe.

The battery rattled into the rubbish bin next to the bag, not in it.

The door to his room opened right after he’d shoved the papers he was looking at away and opened his notebook of lyrics instead. He looked up and blinked at the brighter light of the corridor invading his tiny room.

It was Bak Gyeong. Behind him in the hall were two of his favorite seconds. More bodyguards and valets than anything else. Maybe if BBB3 went down to just one goon instead of two for their CEO, then it wouldn’t be so far in the red?

“Junseo. Junseo.” Bak put his hands on his hips. Jun turned in his chair. He would have stood, but the room was so small and Bak had already advanced so far inside that there really wasn’t room. He pushed his chair back, using the wheels, and scrambled to his feet.

“Boss.”