Page 40 of Tell Me Where It Ends
I stare at the screen, my skin still warm from Suho’s touch. His scent clings to me, a shameless, incriminating piece of evidence.
The girl who fell asleep in his arms last night was reckless and, for a few stupid, glorious hours, had let herself believe they were invincible.
The woman who woke up knows the bill has just arrived.
6b
No Safe Ground
The first thing I notice isn’t the sunlight slicing across the floor or the evidence of a life that isn’t mine—his script pages stacked neatly, our clothes in a messy trail to the bed. It’s the angry notification badges on my phone. They seem to multiply as I watch.
A timeline of my own execution, delivered in a neat little list.
Cold, clipped messages from the CEO.
Shin’s final, stark:Call me.
And then one from an unknown number, sitting at the very top of the screen, looking less like a text and more like an unexploded bomb.
It’s the morbid curiosity of staring at your own car crash. It’s a rule of human nature: you have to look at the wreckage. My thumb swipes it open.
[Official summon for police questioning — Seoul Metropolitan Police Department, Narcotics Unit. Appearance required at 10:00 AM.]
I sit up so fast the sheets tangle around my legs, nearly sending me face-first into the nightstand.
A sharp, ugly sound escapes my throat—somewhere between a gasp and a choke—as the first curl of panic burns through my chest.
Beside me, Suho blinks awake, hair sticking up in a way that would still look editorial-ready inVogue Korea.
“You’re loud for someone who’s not even dressed yet,” he mutters, voice rough with sleep. Then his gaze drops to my phone screen. “Oh.”
“‘Oh’?” I snap, my voice cracking. “That’s all you’ve got?‘Oh’?” It’s a quiet, world-weary ‘oh’—the kind that comes when someone sees the tidal wave a second before you do and realizes you’re standing right in its path.
He sits up, rubbing his face. “Breathe.”
“Breathe? I’m about to breathe my way into prison!”
The infuriating ghost of a smirk touches his lips. “That’s not how prison works.”
“Really? You’d know? Is this in theHow to Survive Prison as a Celebritymanual?”
He doesn’t rise to the bait. He just leans over and takes my phone. “I’ll call a car. The agency’s lawyers will meet you there.”
“And Shin,” I mutter. The mention of his name is a physical thing, a guilty weight settling low in my stomach. I can picture his unanswered messages: the barrage of‘Are you okay?’ texts, and that final two-word message.
Suho catches the shift in my expression, his own hardening slightly. “He’s your manager. He’ll be there. That’s his job.”
“That’s not all he is,” I say quietly, more to myself than to him.
He exhales, a hint of impatience in the sound. “Min-hee, I can’t go with you. I have a full day of shooting, and you know we can’t be seen together right now. It would just add fuel to the—“
“The scandal?” I interrupt, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “The rumors? The fact that the entire internet already thinks I’m running an underground weed cartel out of my kitchen?”
The ghost of a smile on his lips vanishes. He scrubs a hand over his face, the exhaustion of the morning suddenly hitting him full-force. “Exactly.”
The sarcasm hangs in the air, a flimsy, useless shield against the cold, hard reality of the situation. He’s right, and we both know it. A long, tense silence stretches between us, filled with a shared, helpless frustration.
“I should go,” I say finally, my voice flat.