Page 75 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 13-16

“Where’s Sahyuk going now?”

Damian checked his screen. “I’m not sure. His location still reads as BBB3, but I’m told he’s not there.”

“I’ll pass it on to security. Can you tell Ellisandre?”

“Yes.” Damian got off the phone, called Ellisandre, and then texted an invite to Mr. Su.

Phone calls done. Damian turned his attention back to the show. Two songs from the end, Jun jogged off stage and into Damian. All of the 5N men were amped, covered in sweat, and breathing hard. There wasn’t a lot of costume changing to be done, but they all needed water and a towel as assistants swarmed them to check their makeup.

“Where is he?” Jun said, leaning into Damian.

“He was at BBB3, but he left. We don’t have his location anymore..”

Jun’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do there?”

Yohei stepped in closer, the other three catching on and crowding in.

“Gyeong is dead,” Damian said. “We think Sahyuk did it.”

Jun’s eyes narrowed. He closed them, drawing a slow breath through his nose, visibly bracing and grounding himself, his hand in a fist. Yohei put a hand on Jun’s arm.

“Good riddance,” Jaewoong said.

“He did it because of what I said,” Jun whispered.

“You only told him the truth,” Yohei said.

Damian breathed a sigh of relief. So Jun had told the others what had happened in the dressing room. He hadn’t been able to ask.

“He’s going to come back,” Jun said. “He only killed Gyeong to get rid of a problem. Where’s Neumann?”

“We don’t know.”

Jun grimaced.

Damian put his hand on Jun’s shoulder. “Ellisandre is on it. Mr. Su is on it. We’re all on it. You have a show, all of you.”

Geun wrapped an arm around Jun from behind. “Let’s do this.”

“A show to remember,” Jun whispered. He lifted his head and nodded to himself. “We got this.” He squeezed Damian’s hand and stepped back, hugging and grabbing hands with Yohei, Su-jin, Geun, and Jaewoong. The next song’s intro was starting. All five members of 5N drew together, melding into one unit.

Jun

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Jun shoved the word to the back of his head. For so long, Bak Gyeong had been this larger than life presence, a towering adult standing over him in the dance studio, a voice haunting him during music practice, a nagging constant during tours, and finally an outright opponent tossing his room, imprisoning him, kidnapping him.

Dead.

Jun raised the microphone to lips, full of something too painful to be joy, too heady to be grief. He was bigger than his body. Something laughed inside his ribs, dark, unkind, lost. The kid who had always hoped to gain Bak’s approval cried out for what was never going to be possible. The fighter in him growled, sensing a kill stolen. And the man he was today grappled with guilt, knowing he’d turned Sahyuk from Damian and set him on Gyeong.

He would do it again. A thousand times, even knowing the outcome.

The beat thudded through him. The other four arranged themselves around him, bracing him from behind, all of their backs turned to the crowd so only he faced them. He threw himself into the moment, raising his empty hand up, leaning over the microphone, one knee forward to brace himself.

Am I man?

Or am I demon?