Cautiously, Faith poked her head out to check that the coast was clear and tiptoed into the echoing silence. Hailey was standing in the middle of the living room, breathing heavily. She was glaring at what had once been the TV. There was a twisted hunk of plastic embedded in its shattered screen, which was, in any case, no longer functional.
"Was that the remote control?"
"The girls are figh-ting," Edie said in a singsong tone. Although she sounded bored, she had obviously beaten a hasty retreat to the chaise lounge when Hailey had destroyed the TV.
Faith planted her hands on her hips, annoyed. "Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?"
Hailey turned, her face murderous. Faith took a step back. "Dave said my mother slept her way to the top."
"That's not what he said," Minnie piped up. Ignoring Hailey's inarticulate shriek of rage, she continued blithely. "Strictly speaking, he said she'd been 'interfering in matters far beyond her scope of competence' and accused her of 'exercising undue influence on the affairs of the company'."
"He called my mother a slut!"
Faith joined Max in taking shelter behind the kitchen island. "This is all very American, isn't it," she whispered. "I thought this sort of thing usually happened behind closed doors in Asia."
The intercom buzzed. Minnie got to it first and stared uncomprehendingly at the video feed. "It's your sister," she said.
Hailey's eyes narrowed. "Let her in."
Minnie and Edie joined Max and Faith at the kitchen island. Edie produced a small carafe of popcorn and placed it delicately on the counter.
"I'm pretty sure that's normally used for coffee or wine, not popcorn," Minnie murmured.
"Four weeks with Legal and you've gotten so fucking anal," Max retorted.
Minnie sniped back with gusto, but Faith wasn't paying attention to their spat anymore. She was staring at the door, which Hailey had opened. Jessica stood in the entryway with two other Korean men.
"Absolutely not," Hailey snarled. "Get out of my building." The door began to swing back into place, but one of the men - probably her brother - extended his arm, halting the door in its tracks. Hailey gritted her teeth and gestured violently, clearly prepared to properly exert her quirk, but Jessica had already marched in without a backward glance. Hailey groaned and stomped after her.
"Dad's watching our apartments," the older woman said. "And you've got more than enough room. We'll be out of your hair before you know it."
"You called my mother a slut," Hailey growled.
Jessica sighed and elbowed one of the Korean men, who jumped. "Well," he began shakily, "that wasn't quite what we said." (Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose.) "The crux of the matter, you see, is that Claire wants to protect your interests and hers, which is all well and good. The issue, you see, is that wealth preservation, while the best strategy for Claire as a private individual, isn't what Astute needs -"
He doubled over. Hailey had kicked him in the nuts.
Max plucked a kernel of popcorn out of Edie's carafe and stuck it in her mouth.
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DESIGNATE: ~ Made by Drone! <3 ~
sugrjangz: so now theyr freaking out abt a SINGLE BOX OF FRIED CHICKEN
sugrjangz: n its been total radio silence frm my parents
sugrjangz: wich is normal tbh but
sugrjangz: i hate being stuck in the middle
sugrjangz: everything abt this situation is so ass
spookyscaryskeletons: ur the one who decided to let them stay in ur house
sugrjangz: fuck this shit
sugrjangz: wya
spookyscaryskeletons: inkigayo
THUNDERDOME: woah fr
spookyscaryskeletons: what
THUNDERDOME: im thr too
sugrjangz: omw
fides1104: guess its lunch alone agn tdy :(
sugrjangz: woah fr
sugrjangz: sry to hear tat
fides1104: ur supposed to beg for forgiveness n come hv lunch w me...
not_ur_power_bank: im free tdy
fides1104: okay
fides1104: yay
Max hacked and spat into the sink. She'd been in the middle of another long draw from her vape when Edie had informed the groupchat that she was also at Inkigayo. The smoke had gone down the wrong pipe. Lunch it is, she thought, and squinted blearily at herself in the mirror. The water from the sink almost seemed to be pulsating in time to the distant music, but that was surely a trick of the light or her own tired eyes. She wiped her hands down on her jeans and made to leave. Then she paused, head cocked.
There was someone crying in one of the cubicles.
Max marched over and rapped smartly on the door. "You okay?" she asked. "괜찮아? 大丈夫ですか?"
The girl coughed wetly. "I'm fine," came the shaky answer - in accented Japanese no less.
Max hesitated. "Everything alright in there?"
The girl in the cubicle didn't respond at first. "I'm about to make a big decision."
"Oh." Max shifted. Ah, I'm in too deep already. Fuck it. "... wanna talk about it?"
The girl in the cubicle took a deep, shuddering breath. "If I do this thing, my life will be over. I trained for years, and all of that's just going to go - down the drain. But," another breath, "if I stay, I'll be able to continue doing what I love. And it's true." The words were spoken half to herself, having taken on the quality of a mantra. "I do love what I do. It's just..."
Max realized, abruptly and with a tiny pinprick of genuine concern, that she was behaving entirely too cavalierly for a conversation like this. She straightened up and brushed a speck of lint off her shoulder. What had possessed her to press her ear against the cubicle door to hear the other girl better? "Listen, this might be kind of weird, but are you, like, actually using the toilet in there or something?"
A few moments passed before the toilet flushed and the door opened. Behind it was an astonishingly pretty girl in a skirt that was too short for her. She didn't look like she'd been crying at all. Her makeup wasn't even smudged. Max was reluctantly impressed.
"I shouldn't be here," she said.
"That's ridiculous," Max retorted. "Like, seriously. What the hell? You're gorgeous." She wasn't the type to gas up girls from outside her friend group willy-nilly, but come on. If you hear someone crying alone in the toilet, make sure she's okay was practically one of the cardinal rules of girlhood, right up there with If she needs a tampon and you have a spare, give it to her. She gestured down at herself. "I mean, hello. Look at me. Actually, forget about me. I've only been in Seoul for a month, and even I can tell that Koreans clean up well, but you blow them all out of the water."
The girl smiled wanly. "Looks aren't everything."
"You're a fucking idol," Max told her. "So I'd say, in this specific situation, yeah, they literally are."
The girl wiped her hands down with a paper towel but made no move to leave the bathroom. "What do you think I should do?"
Not for the first time, Max felt an intense urge to be literally anywhere else other than right here, having this conversation. She wasn't qualified to give career advice to anyone. "Uh. What was the question?"
The girl shot her an unimpressed look. "I'm just asking for an objective take."
Fuck. "Uh. Depends on why you want to, um, pull the trigger in the first place, right?"
The girl closed her eyes, visibly composing herself. "Let's say... someone asked for a favor. And he said... it'd just be the once. So. I let him do what he liked. And I managed to debut despite failing my evaluation. Despite not being good enough." She turned back to the sink, knuckles white against the edge. "But then he asked for another favor. And another. And another."
Max channeled Minnie. "That doesn't sound legal."
"This is Korea."
"I'm not Korean, but..." Oh, fuck it. "Yeah. Why the hell not. Get out of there."
"You really think so?"
"Yeah." Max shrugged. "It sounds pretty bad. And illegal." It sounded criminal, to be honest, but she really didn't want to get involved in something like this. "I mean, if they've been doing illegal shit, you can probably blackmail them back in exchange for them letting you go or something. Right?"
The girl didn't look like she understood, but left the bathroom with her. They navigated the endless corridors, Max following her as she traversed the labyrinth, and eventually they arrived outside a dressing-room. The girl took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
"Thanks."
Max shrugged. "Anytime." Then she went to find Edie.
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spookyscaryskeletons: so i told E and H alr
spookyscaryskeletons: but the weirdest thing happend @ inkigayo tdy
fides1104: ?
spookyscaryskeletons: i met a girl crying in the toilet
spookyscaryskeletons: she was talking abt doing sth drastic
spookyscaryskeletons: like
spookyscaryskeletons: career ending?
sugrjangz: shes frm quartz btw
fides1104: oh
fides1104: thats
THUNDERDOME: one of paragons subsidiaries
THUNDERDOME: yea
spookyscaryskeletons: like im pretty sure her manager is doing sth to her.
spookyscaryskeletons: if not her manager then someone else idk
spookyscaryskeletons: but shes like. not ok
not_ur_power_bank: maybe we shd do sth abt it?
sugrjangz: tf cld we do
not_ur_power_bank: ur sister literally runs paragon
sugrjangz: u think she'll listen to me?
not_ur_power_bank: i mean
not_ur_power_bank: she's living in ur apartment
sugrjangz: ehhh
THUNDERDOME: which table r yall at btw
not_ur_power_bank: im waving
"So," Eunhyuk said. "How was it?"
Minnie shrugged and ignored the waiter as he placed her order down in front of her. They had gone to a Mexican restaurant after her physio appointment. Outside, an unending stream of office drones buzzed to and fro. Most of them were bundled up in thick down jackets, hands shoved into their pockets, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. The temperature had really plunged lately.
"No lingering physical ailments, right?" Her 오빠 was still talking. "I'm aware that our parents think otherwise, but if you need to see a shrink, I can get you an appointment on my own if you don't want them to know. I do have my own money."
"Honestly, my last conscious memory was of him flying at my face. After that, nothing. Next thing I knew, I was in the medbay."
Eunhyuk hummed. "할아버님 was worried."
Minnie looked up sharply from where she'd been painstakingly dismantling her taco.
"Why are you surprised?" Eunhyuk shifted. "The last Kim to endure such a public beatdown was Aunt Dahyun, and that was before you were even born. I don't even care if that Owari maniac ends up as Japan's #1 Hero. We're not going to forget what he did to you in a hurry. He's made an enemy of us."
Minnie decided not to comment on that disturbing revelation about her grandfather. "Owari's not going to make it onto the rankings," she noted. "I'm pretty sure he's got ties to the government."
"Oh, a 왜놈 attack dog." Eunhyuk rolled his eyes. "Even better."
Later in the car, Eunhyuk said, "You know, you should spend more time with Joowon."
Minnie rolled her eyes. "She's literally a baby."
"She's in middle school. She looks up to you, you know."
"I can't have a normal conversation with her." Minnie turned to look out the window, marvelling at how the sun glanced off the water, and decided that changing the subject was her best shot at avoiding the subject of her sister. "How's work?"
Eunhyuk narrowed his eyes at her and jerked as the car behind him honked at them. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing." He wrenched the steering wheel to the left and careened down a side road. They were almost there. "Work's fine. How's your internship?"
"Fine. Given the circumstances."
"The circumstances?" There were a dozen black vans stationed ostentatiously outside the Paragon Creative building. Eunhyuk slowed his car to a crawl, then a stop. "These circumstances?"
Minnie got out of the car. "I don't know what this is about," she promised, "but I'll tell you as soon as I'm able." She shut the car door and jogged into the building, rubbernecking at the chaos unfolding around her. Sharply-dressed men strode purposefully about, toting boxes of documents and questioning employees.
One of them zeroed in on her and barred her way as she approached the lift lobby. "Who are you?" he demanded.
Minnie flashed her temp pass at him. "I'm an intern," she squeaked. The man looked her up and down dubiously, then waved her past.
Her department was in chaos. Her direct superior was nowhere to be found (not that she was looking very hard). Quickly, she grabbed her things from her cubicle and went to find Hailey, who was on the top floor as usual. Faith was with her, as were Edie and Max.
"I was supposed to be in Gangnam today," Max said to her. "Zinterhofer's opening a store on Apgujeong, did you hear?"
Minnie made an interested noise.
"Jess's off being questioned," Hailey snapped, cutting Minnie off. "Something about an audit. Dad's work."
"I thought Paragon wasn't under Astute."
"Dad's lawyers built something into the original contract. I don't know the specifics." Hailey tipped back in her chair. "But this is all pretty exciting, isn't it?" She certainly sounded entertained. "Didn't think Jess would switch sides, honestly. I always thought she was loyal to Dad."