Page 56 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

M y day had started so well today.

Jihoon decided to skip his early-morning gym set to stay in bed with me, which meant watching the morning sun creep in through the windows and seeing how the rays turned the naked skin of his chest a sun-kissed bronze.

What followed had been even better, so when I rolled into work an hour later, I was in fine spirits.

Hana greeted me at security, and upon seeing what had up to that point been a rather satisfied expression on my face – even though half of it was covered by a blue surgical mask – proceeded to ask me with some glee, if it was because I’d seen the latest gossip blog.

I held my hand under the sanitiser station and then rubbed the alcohol gel into my hands as I gave her a blank look. She got her own gel as I scanned my pass to enter through the glass partitions. She followed me close behind, earning a scowl from the security guard.

“ ENT-Tabs ?” She caught up to me.

“The what?” I scowled at her, thinking I’d misheard, pulling that damn surgical mask down under my chin.

“Oh my god, girl, really? You’ve worked here nearly two months, and you’ve not heard of the Tabs ?”

“Keep saying the words, maybe it’ll start making sense.” I sighed, jabbing at the call button for the elevator.

How could I tell a normal person that the reason I deliberately avoided trash columns was because they often featured absolute bollocks about my famous boyfriend and his equally famous mates?

But Hana would not be deterred as we boarded the elevator together. She seemed especially perky this morning.

“It’s a gossip blog that someone writes specifically about ENT.

They publish a new article every Friday!

” She grinned at me in the reflection of the doors.

It was a sharp sort of smile, and it occurred to me then that she really did seem to love the kind of tabloid garbage that often surrounded the industry, despite actually working with the people who were often written about.

Or maybe it was because she worked alongside them.

If anything, I’d have thought that working here would make a person less inclined to give any time to the drivel in those gossip rags, having seen the very real humans that performers and actors were.

“Most people think the author is someone who camps outside,” she went on, oblivious to my disdain for the subject. “But I think it’s someone in this building.”

Hana looked positively gleeful at the idea that an employee would be spreading online rumours. I guess we all had to have hobbies.

“Yeah, I don’t really read those things…”

The doors slid open, and we each stepped off. I’d hoped she’d drop this topic as we re-entered a public space, but nope.

“So anyway, this morning there was a really long article about GVibes.”

I had to force myself to keep my pace normal, despite nearly tripping over my own feet.

“Well, not really GVibes. Specifically, Baek Jihoon.”

“Uh huh.”

We’d moved into the break room, where Mr Park usually delivered our morning agenda. This was handy because this is also where the coffee lived. There were only a handful of other juniors in here at the moment, and I raised my hand in greeting on the way over to the coffee machine.

They’d gradually lightened up around me, and I suspected it was because they’d figured out I was just here to do a job and not spy on the talent – which was apparently what they’d thought, according to Hana.

“The Tabs claims to have pictures of him and a girl!” Hana’s voice squeaked in excitement.

“Ow, fuck!”

“Shit, Kaiya, are you okay?”

“Yeah, it was just a splash.” I shuffled over to the sink to run cold water on my finger that I’d just accidentally run under the hot water dispenser.

“Clumsy this morning. Not getting enough sleep?” Hana’s face was screwed up in concern.

“Yeah, I mean, no. What did you say?”

“Hmm?”

“About the pictures? Of Ji-of Baek Jihoon.”

“Oh, yeah, isn’t that fucking wild? Apparently, they were taken at the party in December. You weren’t here then.”

Hana looked off to the side, a frown on her face.

“There was a big, fancy party upstairs. It was a ‘masked ball.’” She mimed quotation marks with her fingers and rolled her eyes, as if she couldn’t think of anything more cringe.

The ball.

A trickle of cold fear rolled down my spine. I cast my mind back to that night, trying to remember if I’d noticed anyone paying us special attention, but honestly it had all been such a blur of weirdness to begin with. There had been that altercation with the drunk guy…

I forced my voice to remain neutral, to not betray the sudden way my heart hammered in my chest, to blame whatever expression was on my face on the way my finger currently throbbed in the stream of cold tap water.

“If it was a masked ball, surely there’s no good pictures.”

My mask had been so well-made, I knew it had covered my face, surely there was no way…

Hana grinned, and I was reminded again of piranhas, all teeth and too much glee.

“I dunno about the girl, but the article is claiming to have pictures that make it pretty damn obvious that whoever she is, she isn’t some industry boss babe.

They’re apparently very… close.” She waggled her eyebrows at me, and I forced a grin onto my face that felt as fake as the rubber plant in the corner of the room, and I could only hope Hana didn’t notice.

There was always a thin layer of stress stretched taut through me, when I considered what might happen if our relationship was discovered. My family, my friends, my whole career was balancing on the edge of a knife. Photographers were everywhere, hell, people with phones were everywhere.

Had we really been so arrogant as to think no one would look closer at our masks?

I had the weirdest urge to scratch every inch of exposed skin, but busied myself instead, trying to inject scepticism into my voice as I said:

“Oh yeah? I’ll believe it when I see it. Are these pictures up?”

“I thought you didn’t care about these gossip rags?” She gave me a sideways glance, and I shrugged.

“I don’t, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the pictures of the party. You know, see how the other side live, and all that.”

I forced a laugh, feeling a measure of relief when Hana huffed and said, “I worked that night. Only downstairs, mind you, and lemme tell you the amount of pompous wankers that walked through that door. I was almost gassed by the amount of perfume I was forced to inhale.” Her accent always seemed to come out a little more when she was bitching about something – which was honestly kind of often.

“Anyway,” she continued on, as if I’d prompted her, “I reckon it’s Lee Hyejin, you know – the pretty one from PYT?

There’s always been rumours about those two.

” Hana poked her tongue out of the side of her mouth, catching it between her teeth in the way she sometimes did when she thought she was being cute.

I turned back to watching the water stream over my finger, even though it had long since gone cold.

“Oh yeah? Wasn’t she also there, though? How could the masked person be Hyejin if Hyejin was also there?”

“I thought you didn’t pay any attention to this shit?”

Hana’s eyes narrowed on me, and I turned away, shrugging my shoulders.

“I don’t. I saw footage of it when I was researching the company before starting.”

“Ah right,” she said easily, and just as I thought she’d drop the subject–

“Hey!” she exclaimed, as if suddenly struck by inspiration.

“What if the masked girl was his main squeeze, and he’s cheating on her with Lee Hyejin?

You know these idol types – all that pent up emotion, all those sweaty dance sessions…

I’m telling you, those two definitely have some history, I can personally attest to having seen them together on more than a few occasions. ”

My head snapped round to look at her, but she wasn’t looking at me, she was swiping on her phone.

“Look.” She pushed the phone so close to my face, I had to rear back to save my nose.

When my eyes refocused, I saw a grainy image on the screen of what was unmistakably Jihoon, stepping out of an elevator, side-by-side with…

yup, that was Lee Hyejin, and even in sweats, she was the kind of stunning that made you want to hate her.

Just a little. Looking closer, Jihoon was also in sweats, a towel slung around his neck.

They were looking at each other, smiling. Had they been in the gym together?

I frowned and couldn’t help myself when I asked, “When was that?”

Hana grinned broadly, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“Hmm, not that long ago, maybe just before his birthday? So, October?”

My stomach knotted. October. His birthday was the Halloween weekend when he’d come to LA. When we’d slept together for the first time.

Hana was speaking again, but I didn’t hear her over the rushing in my ears.

Jihoon had always maintained that he barely knew Lee Hyejin, but that photo certainly implied they were at least friendly.

Even though I knew it could be rationalised in hundreds of different ways – I mean, they worked in the same building, for fuck’s sake, they were bound to cross paths – I couldn’t help the way my jaw clenched.

I felt a cold bead of sweat roll down my spine, and a sick feeling settled in the bottom of my stomach.

Had Mr Park not come into the break room right then, I’m not sure I would have been able to pull myself out of the spiral I’d been circling down.

But he had, and I’d turned off the tap, coffee forgotten, and gone to stand with the other juniors as we got our assignments for the day.

As it was Friday, it was as busy as it ever got, setting up ‘walk-ons’ – basically a ready-to-use set that artists would use over the weekend for Lives and social media posts.

Since ENT didn’t technically run over the weekend, we had to prepare on Friday for anything that needed to happen over the weekend.

Of course, tell that to the army of managers, stylists, and other on-call specialists that were theoretically on call at any time.

It was especially busy at the moment, as the company seemed to be retreating inwards in a bid to shield its artists from the ‘coronavirus’ that had officially entered the country.

Everyone was publicly downplaying it; tours were still being planned for later in the year, engagements were still being booked, but there was an air of…

precaution. Things that could be filmed in-house were being relocated to ENT, instead of shipping artists off all over the country, like normal.

Satellite broadcasts were being suggested, instead of putting performers on planes.

Because of this, the building felt crammed – people rushing about all over the place, sets being taken without permission, stylists having to run from one station to the other.

Management had even implemented a booking system for the meeting rooms, although most people seemed to ignore this, constantly interrupting in-progress meetings, because they hadn’t bothered to check the room usage schedule.

It being February 29th also meant all the end-of-month shit was happening today, so that coupled with the walk-on setups, and every artist and their dog being on-site meant it was hella busy.

Even if I’d had time for lunch – which I didn’t – I don’t think I could've eaten anything. I still hadn’t seen the photos the Tabs apparently had from the ball. They hadn't posted them. I'd caved and found the site during a bathroom break.

There were no photos from that night, just a notice saying they had them and would be posting them soon.

Just the thought of it made me sick with worry.

It wasn’t even worry for myself, because if I had been in any way recognisable, I would have known about it by now. No, I worried that this would bring back up the scandal from the conference room footage. That wound was barely closed. This had the power to rip it wide open.

The good thing about it being busier than Black Friday at Walmart was that I’d barely seen Hana all day and if I was really honest… that was a relief.

My mind kept skipping back to the photo she'd shown me, snagging on it at random moments – like a vinyl record scratching, jarring me back to the moment I’d seen it on Hana’s phone. Each time I remembered it, a sick feeling settled in my stomach.

I wanted to like Hana, and I did. Mostly. But there were times when I’d look at her and something about her – something I couldn’t put my finger on – just felt off.

It wasn’t just the way I’d noticed her looking at the male groups – although that intensity was frankly bizarre. But, at least that you could put down to how ridiculously good-looking they were. Even if she was engaged.

No, it was the way she sometimes seemed to separate them – all performers, really – from us.

Sure, they were famous, good looking, and a ton of other stuff that set them apart, but I’d come to see them almost like colleagues, or at the very least, real humans.

With Hana, it was almost like we were in a zoo, and they were the animals.

I’d started calling her out on it. It was the little digs here and there, like the snide way she talked about the female artists and how they looked, or didn’t look.

It was also the commentary on the tiny plates of food they often had on their tables in the canteen, but rarely seemed to eat.

Sometimes it was the way she gossiped about the way a trainee boy group was failing to attract much social media buzz.

Most of it was just petty, but a lot of it verged into cruel, and that’s when my patience waned with her.

She didn’t seem to mind when I snapped at her, though. I think she thought it was funny.

It made me uncomfortable.