Page 5 of Tell Me Where It Ends

“I didn’t mean to—I just—I couldn’t—” It’s useless. My voice is buried under the wave of it. Grief, shame, fear—they tangle in my chest and spill out in hiccupped sobs, hot and loud and messy. I want to explain. I really do. But I can’t seem to find the language for this particular kind of falling apart.

Shin just sits there besideme, quiet and still. It’s a miracle he doesn’t just roll his eyes. A lesser man would already sigh and mutter,What is it this time?—the familiar opening line to another episode of my life going completely off the rails.

But he doesn’t. He just waits. He doesn’t try to stop the crying or offer empty reassurances. He simply takes my hand in his, his thumb brushing over my knuckles like it’s muscle memory by now. Then he lets out a soft sigh—a sigh that says,I’m here with you in the wreckage.

When the sobs finally quiet into hiccuping breaths, he speaks. “Listen,” he says softly. “The test usually only detects repeated use… you didn’t, right?” He hesitates, then adds more carefully, “If you used it at all.”

I manage a small, jerky shake of my head. It’s all I can give him, but it’s enough.

Something in him visibly eases. I see it in the slight drop of his shoulders, the way the tight line of his brow finally softens. It doesn’t fix the fact that the ship has hit an iceberg, but for a second, the floor stops tilting beneath my feet.

He gives my hand one last, firm squeeze before standing. He disappears into the kitchen, and soonI hear the quiet, ordinary music of him getting the soup ready—the rustle of a takeout bag, drawers sliding open for bowls, the soft clink of a spoon against ceramic.

From the other side of the room, he calls out, his voice deliberately casual. “I’ll stay here. For now.”

I sit up straighter on the couch, swiping the back of my hand across my damp cheeks. “You don’t have to.” My voice comes out hoarse.

“I know,” he says, not turning around. There’s a quiet finality in his tone. “But I’m not going anywhere, Min-hee.”

He says it so simply. So matter-of-fact. As if it’s a law of physics. As if staying is just part of his job—like booking appointments, managing scandals, or picking me up when I fall apart. My chest constricts again—for a different reason, though I couldn’t say what.

He ladles thegalbitanginto a bowl and sets it gently on the table. I watch him move around the kitchen with that quiet, practiced ease—sleeves pushed up, cuffs rolled unevenly.

And for the first time, I don’t see my manager, or the fixer, or the guy who always knows what todo. I just see him. The man who never raises his voice. The man who never walks away, even when I’m a category-five hurricane of my own making.

He’s my one constant variable. The single, predictable data point in an equation that never makes sense.

My pillar in all this madness.

And maybe that’s the most dangerous thing of all—learning to lean on someone, just when you’ve convinced yourself you shouldn’t need anyone at all.

3

The OneWho Got Away

If Kang Shin is my pillar—the calm in the chaos—then Kim Suho is the wildfire.

A storm I never saw coming, but couldn’t tear myself away from.

And that, of course, was probably my biggest problem.

He was part of Galaxy4, one of the biggest male idol groups at the time—the designated main visual and rapper.

Our groups debuted the same year, under the same notoriously overworked management, as part of the second generation of K-pop idols.

It wasn’t destiny. In the small, incestuous world of a K-pop agency, it was statistical inevitability.

So, of course, we met.

I remember the first time I saw him like it was yesterday. It felt like something straight out of a K-drama—one of those iconic scenes where the leads pass each other in a school hallway, everything slowing down, a romantic ballad swelling in the background as the rest of the world fades away.

Yeah. Just like that.

Except it wasn’t a school hallway; it was the corridor of our management building.

The chemistry hit me like a lightning strike. It was physical. Electric.

Suho might’ve been the most handsome person I’d ever laid eyes on—tall, athletic, with light brown eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips that always curled into a knowing smirk.