It’s been three days, and the burn of embarrassment has faded from a raging fire threatening to engulf me from the inside out to a full-body sunburn. Still stinging and in need of some major damage control, but I’ll survive. Probably. As long as I don’t get taken out by a rogue tennis ball in gym class.

I jog over to the Cho twins, who are serving tennis balls into cones arranged around the court.

“Rachel, you’ve got terrible panda eyes,” Juhyun says, lowering her racket and leaning in to inspect my face. “I have Depuffing Raspberry Eye Gel in my locker. You can borrow it.”

“Are they really that bad?” I ask, touching my face self-consciously.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if you said you had gotten into a fistfight with Mina and lost,” Hyeri jokes, serving a tennis ball perfectly into a cone. She pumps her fist in the air. “Ah-ssa! It’s all about the angles, baby.”

I sigh, stifling a yawn. “I wish a black eye was all Mina did to me. I haven’t been able to sleep since the Incident.”

“You have to stop replaying it in your mind,” Juhyun says. “Don’t think about how you totally flubbed your audition and threw up all over the most famous and adored K-pop star in the world.”

“Just his shoes,” I say defensively.

“Right, exactly. That’s not even that bad. Pristine white Nikes, was it?”

Hyeri sighs mournfully, raising her eyes to the sky. “RIP Jason Lee’s shoes. Your time came far too soon.”

The twins giggle behind their tennis rackets. I’m about to jab back, but I interrupt myself with a humongous yawn.

“Damn, you really have been staying up all night thinking about it, haven’t you?” Hyeri says.

“Not just thinking about it,” I say. Our coach walks by, and I pretend to swing my racket back and forth. She nods in approval and continues on. I slip my phone out of my tennis skirt and pop up a photo of Jason and Mina singing together on Instagram, holding it out to the twins. “Looking at it too. DB announced Jason and Mina’s duet.” I grimace. As their voices burst out of my phone, the only thing I can find to take solace in is the fact that Mina’s face has that squashed-in look I’m familiar with from six years of voice lessons with her—meaning she can’t quite hit the high notes in the chorus she’s singing with Jason. But clearly DB hasn’t noticed. Like all K-pop labels, DB has a zero-tolerance policy for social media (to go along with their zero-tolerance dating policy)—as in, trainees do not post and are not posted about, ever. On pain of being cut from the program and, if the rumors are true, shipped off to military school. If they shared this about Mina, that means they have some seriously big plans for this duet. And for her.

Hyeri scrolls through the comments, reading them out loud. “ ‘Daebak, I’ve been waiting my whole life for a Jason Lee solo. And this girl is sooo pretty!’ ”

“ ‘If she’s singing with Jason, she must be the best trainee at DB,’ ” Juhyun reads over her sister’s shoulder. “ ‘They look so good together. Imagine the babies they would make.’ ”

I groan, grabbing the phone back and shoving it in my pocket. “Please. I was up all night reading the comments. I don’t need to hear them out loud.”

From across the court, Coach Sloat blows on her whistle. “Game time, girls! Tennis doubles. Line up for your turn.”

“Hey, Juhyun! Loved your video on wing-tip liquid liner last night.” Wan Somi smiles sweetly at the twins and squeezes into line between me and Hyeri, her tennis racket smacking me in the knees as she boxes me out.

I’m used to it. Seoul International School is one of the most exclusive private schools in Korea, educating the one percent of the country’s one percent: children of K-drama stars, government officials, and girls like Somi, whose parents and grandparents have run the Sitisung corporation for the last fifty years. She’s constantly sucking up to Juhyun and Hyeri, but with my lack of a trust fund and no heiress status to speak of, I’ve never been important enough for her to notice. Even my K-pop trainee status doesn’t get me on her radar. I take a swig from my water bottle when suddenly Somi whips around to face me.

“Hey, Rachel, I heard about the duet.”

I choke on my water. Wan Somi is talking to me? I glance over at the twins, who look as mystified as I do.

She purses her lips in mock pity. “Choo Mina’s the daughter of the C-MART president, right? We spent a summer with them in Provence once, when we were kids.” Of course you did. “Rich and talented.” She clucks her tongue at me. “That’s two for two, and you’re still at zero. And here I thought DB had standards for their K-pop trainees.”

Juhyun takes a step forward, looking ready to swing her tennis racket into Somi’s face, but gets pushed back by Goo Kyungmi, another classmate, as she hurls herself between me and Somi.

“Don’t listen to her, Rachel!” Kyungmi shouts. I stare at her in shock. Kyungmi is Juhyun’s biggest fan and is always offering to carry Juhyun’s books and her lunch tray and leaves little presents taped to her locker. Once she even brought a puppy to school for Juhyun to play with between classes, but the principal made her take it home when it peed all over the putting greens in the south lawn. But this is the first time she’s ever spoken to me.

Kyungmi throws her arms around my shoulders, nearly whipping me in the face with her high ponytail. “You must have so many mixed feelings about the duet. Are you okay? You know I’m here for you if you need to talk, right? You can tell me anything about your trainee life.”

“Thanks… Kyungmi…,” I say, extracting myself from her surprisingly viselike grip. “But I’m fine.”

“Really? Are you sure? Hey, we should take a selfie together in our tennis clothes!” She pulls out her phone.

“No phones on the courts!” Coach Sloat says, stomping over to us. She points to Somi and Kyungmi. “You two, get out there. You’re next on doubles.”

Somi grumbles and drags her feet onto the court. Kyungmi shoots me a regretful look as she follows after Somi. Sloat whirls on me next, her eyes narrowing.

“Sorry, Coach,” I say hastily, bouncing into some jumping jacks. “Warming up for my game now!”

“Wait,” she says. She glances over her shoulder at the rest of the students and then leans in and whispers, “Is it true that Mina and Jason are dating?”

I gape at her. Seriously? Even famous tennis champions and magazine cover stars?

She notices my expression and chuckles, scratching the back of her head. “I’m just kidding. Obviously.” Clearing her throat awkwardly, she turns her attention back to class. “Good serve, Kyungmi!”

* * *

Seoul International School was built on the edge of Hannam-dong, across the Han River from Gangnam, one of Seoul’s trendiest neighborhoods. It’s surrounded by three of the city’s most exclusive residential areas, all highly prized by Seoul’s elite not only for the suitable selection of designer boutiques and hotspot restaurants, but by the fact that Hannam-dong, unlike the rest of Seoul, has the luxury of space. Which might explain why our school sits on five and a half acres of pristine, uninterrupted land in one of the world’s most crowded cities. Aside from our regulation clay tennis courts, Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, a full track, and soccer field, the school has outdoor and indoor amphitheaters, a movie screening room, and ice-skating rink. The horticulture club plants bright-fuchsia orchids that line the main driveway all the way up to the central school building, and every Wednesday the pyrotechnics society and the AV club put on a fireworks display worthy of any Fourth of July celebration.