She scoots her chair near mine, leaning in so close that I can smell the soju on her breath. “Listen, Rachel. Know what you’re getting yourself into. When you sign that contract, you’re losing ten years of your life—”

“Wait, I thought K-pop contracts only last for seven years? Isn’t that the law?”

Jina’s eyes widen, her mouth curling in another maniacal laugh. “Oh, you naive child. You think DB doesn’t have a way to get around whatever laws they want? Somewhere in some bank in Switzerland, in some secure vault, are the three-year-extension contracts DB forced me and the rest of Electric Flower to sign the same day we signed our original contracts. Postdated, of course, so everything will hold up in court.” Her eyes focus in on me, an almost pitying look now mingling with her soju-fueled rage. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? This glamour? This fame? It’s all an illusion set up by the label. The execs. And then they’ll take everything away from you, framing you as an irresponsible, high-maintenance diva, so that no other label will want to touch you with a ten-foot pole.” She laughs, but it comes out as a sob. “They’ll fucking ruin you and make it seem like you’re the one who destroyed yourself. Look at me. My career is over.”

“But why?” I say. My mind is whirring as I try to make sense of what she’s saying. “Why would they do this to you?”

“What did I tell you, Rachel?” Jina stabs a toothpick into our tteokbokki, holding my gaze. “It’s dangerous to have a boyfriend as a K-pop star.”

My stomach sinks. “The guy you were with in Jeju? Song Gyumin?”

She nods and her voice grows soft. “The great Song Gyumin. When his first seven years were up, he renegotiated for a better deal. More money. He thought it would be the same for me. He said he was taking me on a ‘secret getaway’ to talk about it all. Some fucking secret, right? The honeymoon capital of the fucking country? And now… well. Secret’s out. DB’s cut and run. And so has he.” She takes a shaky breath as I process her words.

“You mean… Wait. You mean he broke up with you?”

Jina covers her face with her hands. Then suddenly, she lets out a scream and smashes her fist onto the plate, tteokbokki sauce flying everywhere and spraying me in the face.

“Of course he broke up with me! That’s how all these stories end. We get boyfriends, we let them ruin our lives, and they get away, scot-free and blameless. You think his label gives a shit about him having a girlfriend? Of course they don’t. It’s one set of rules for them and another set of rules for us. DB talks about us being a family. But they don’t care. They don’t care about me. About you. They don’t care about anyone. All they care about is making us into perfect K-pop machines that will do everything they say and rake in the money for them. Well, DB can go fuck themselves. Mr. Noh, Mr. Choo, everybody. Fuck them! I know secrets that would set the K-pop world on fire!”

Jina’s friends appear at her sides, each of them taking an arm and lifting her from her chair. “Jina sweetie, time to go,” one of them says.

As they lead her out of the pojangmacha, Jina locks eyes with me again and shouts, “Watch out for Mr. Choo, Rachel. Don’t get any more mixed up with him or his precious daughter than you already have. You hear me?”

She disappears from the tent, her shouts fading into the night. I don’t realize until then that I’m shaking. What did she mean she knows secrets that would set the K-pop world on fire? And why did she keep talking about Mr. Choo? I want to forget it, along with the rest of this terrible date, but the look on Jina’s face, the sound of her scream—it’s all permanently burned into my brain. Suddenly, my whole body starts to ache, the kimbap and tteokbokki I ate curdling into a hard pit at the bottom of my stomach.

I look across the table at Jason, who’s mopping up the tteokbokki sauce. “Poor Jina,” Jason says, shaking his head. “It really sucks what she’s going through. She’s obviously distressed.”

Something about the way he says it makes me look at him sharply. “Well, of course. You heard everything she said, didn’t you? How could she not be distressed?”

He nods. “I heard. But also, I don’t know. There are two sides to every story. It’s true that DB doesn’t pay us well, but like Jina says, they also provide us with clothes and apartments. It’s not that hard to make ends meet if you’re careful.” He shrugs. “I mean, I’ve always been treated pretty well by them.”

“That’s because you’re Jason Lee,” I say, frustration building in my chest as I think of what Jina said about Gyumin. “Of course they treat you well! The worst thing you’ve ever done is steal Romeo’s custom orange hair color!”

“What?” Jason looks at me, perplexed.

I sigh. Now is not the time to get into the DB rumor mill. “It’s not important. But don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the double standard in the industry. It’s different for girls than it is for guys.”

His brow furrows and I blink, my doubt from earlier in the day rushing furiously back.

“You have noticed, haven’t you?” I say, flashing back to practice a few weeks ago, Jason strolling in late with an armful of Lotteria, smiling casually at the execs.

“To be honest, not really.” He frowns. “At the end of the day, DB is a business. It doesn’t really benefit them to treat the guys differently than the girls.”

My throat is tight. Is he for real? “What about the girls at Lotte World? You heard for yourself the praise they had for you versus the nasty things they had to say about me and Mina.”

“Rachel, that’s just a couple people’s opinions. Everyone deals with it—even me. It doesn’t mean the whole industry is sexist or biased or whatever.”

I suck in a breath.

Oh. Wow. He is for real. I laugh in disbelief, wiping my hands against my face and shaking my head. “For someone who lives and breathes K-pop, it’s amazing how little of it you really see.”

His frown deepens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The red tent flaps open and I turn my head, looking at the couple who’s just walked into the pojangmacha and is glancing at Jason and me with curious expressions. Panic rises in my throat like bile. Do they recognize us?

A sinking feeling starts to spread throughout my body, and I realize it’s been growing inside me ever since that day eating naengmyeon with my family. Ever since Leah told me about Jina not re-signing with Electric Flower.

I was wrong.

But so was Jina. She told me that being with Jason wouldn’t just be difficult; it would be dangerous. And it is. But it’s also unjust. I gave my life to DB, and in the end this decision—a decision we both made—will destroy me. And only me. In the end I will be the only one who’s forced to walk away from everything I’ve worked for—the fans, the music, the magic. For the first time in a long time, I can feel the threads of my life start to weave together with perfect clarity. And they’re all pulling me toward one obvious conclusion: I might want to be with Jason, but I need to debut. And being with Jason could cost me my career before it even begins.

The pressure builds in my chest, making it hard to breathe. “I can’t believe I let things go so far between us. This will ruin me.”