“So does that mean now isn’t a good time to ask about a solo project?” Dante asked me.
“Dude, she came here to escape work!” Jun pointed out.
Dante turned and arched an eyebrow at Jun, then, grabbing a cushion and flinging it at the maknae’s face, he went and sat on his stomach. “My first method of distraction involved removing her panties,” he said, ignoring Jun’s protests. “And I was thinking of a Chinese single, so how about you and I plan a vacation to China?”
“Ooooh.” Jun’s eyes lit up in excitement as he sat up and wrapped his arms around Dante’s torso. “Yes. Vacation!”
Wrinkling his nose up, Dante looked down at Jun. “Who said you were invited?”
I laughed, the pair of them seemingly oblivious to my amusement as they bickered between them. This was why I had come here.
So far, the only person who had something lined up for when this comeback was finished was Nate as he continued with hosting a show.
“If you want to release a Chinese single, I’m down for that, but I’d be more inclined to let you do that over here,” I said, interrupting the pair.
Both of them looked at me, tilting their heads. The synchrony of the action made me smile. “Doesn’t that defeat the Chinese part of the plan?” Jun asked.
“Yeah, but don’t forget we have Atlantis Entertainment Shanghai,” I said, dryly. “Why go out of the company to produce a single.”
Dante blinked. “How about an American album and a trip to the States?”
Minhyuk sat down on the couch, twirling around and then laying down so his head was in my lap. He looked up at me from under his dyed blonde hair. “What has Sejin done now?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Or the same thing as always. It’s just his presence lingering and Woojin refusing to cut him loose. I’m sorry.” I ran my fingers through his hair. “I’m making it seem like the end of the world when it’s really not.”
“Have you heard about Subin at Meropis Entertainment?” Jun asked.
“Meropis?” Tae repeated in disbelief. “Really?”
“Holly wanted distracting and group sex isn’t an option.”
“So you went for Meropis Entertainment?” Nate rolled his eyes.
“Subin? The pregnant idol?” I asked. That was old news. One of the members—now former member—of their girl group ECHO had gotten pregnant. The news had broken back in May when she couldn’t hide the bump on her very slim frame. She had to be about seven months pregnant now.
Jun nodded. He wriggled free from under Dante and sat upright. “I have heard a rumor that her baby daddy is Mo Daesik.”
“Shut up!” Nate exclaimed, his mouth dropping open. “He’s the Chairman.”
My hand in Minhyuk’s hair stilled and I pulled myself off Kyun’s shoulder.
“You want to be careful spreading rumors like that,” Dante chided him. “The man is in a position of power.”
“Exactly,” Jun agreed. “He took advantage. And I heard Subin isn’t the only one he has had a thing with.”
I reached into my purse, pulling out my phone, holding it to my ear. “Hello…? I’ll be right there.” Gently urging Minhyuk from my lap, I stood. “I’m sorry guys. Emergency back at the office.” I gave them all an apologetic smile. “Have fun with your fans this afternoon.”
Giving Tae a kiss on the cheek because he was in my way, I slid past him and ducked out into the hall, almost bumping into Manager Kim.
“You still have time before—”
I held up my phone. “The office called.”
Reveal
The office hadn’t called.
No one had.
I was just suddenly feeling very … claustrophobic.
Outside was cold and fresh, and as I stood by my car, trying to feel like my lungs were working properly, I did start to feel a little bit better.
Part of this was because I was an overthinker. The amount of times I would replay a conversation in my head, analyzing every word I had chosen and the body language and words of the person talking to me probably put me on the crazy list.
OK, so I’d started seeing H3RO when I wasn’t the Vice Chairwoman of the company they were signed to—but I had been their manager.
At the time, I’d done everything I could to make sure they hadn’t been disbanded, as well as earn themselves the wins, and if I had to do it again, I’d do all of that the same. But now I was the second highest-ranking person at Atlantis, and it was always in the back of my mind whenever I made a decision.
The last thing I wanted was, if our relationship ever came out, for anyone to accuse me of playing favorites with them. With everything I did, I always made sure I was doing it for the best interest of Atlantis as well as H3RO.
Or I tried.
I was in love with these guys and I wanted them to be happy.
Sometimes, I let them get their way or showed them some favoritism, and I’d use the convenient excuse that they were popular right now and they’d earned whatever it was.
And every time, a little voice in the back of my mind told me that I was in a position of power.
When that little voice decided to become vocal, I’d grab a coffee and give her a stern talking to: H3RO succeeding benefited H3RO and Atlantis. More importantly, these guys weren’t impressionable rookies. If they didn’t like something, they would all tell me so. Some more vocally than others.
But hell, hearing Jun say what my conscience would tell me had gotten to me. Even if it was about someone else.
My phone ringing made me jump and I dropped my keys. Answering the call, I crouched down to pick them up. “Hello?”
“I know you said you wanted a couple of hours and a clear diary, but Chairman Lee’s secretary has just called to arrange a meeting for this afternoon,” Inhye said, apologetically.
Although I had a feeling my father suspected something was going on between me and someone in H3RO, I’d never told him. “It’s fine, Inhye. I’m heading back to the office now, anyway.”
My days were an endless cycle of meetings and approving documents, that even escaping for the short time I had—spending just a little time with H3RO—had made me feel a little better. Even if it had ended abruptly.
I spent the drive back repeatedly informing my conscience that I loved H3RO, they loved me, and even if I did show some favoritism—who wouldn’t?
Lee Woojin was waiting for me when I walked into my office. “Why did you cancel the party planner? Do you realize how important the Halloween Party is for Atlantis Entertainment?”
“Cancelled? I didn’t—”
“Sejin called.”
I moved my hands behind my back and curled my hands into fists.
When it came to Woojin, there were two sides to him. One was the Chairman of Atlantis Entertainment, and the other was my father. When it came to work, I liked him. after a bumpy start—caused by the demon-spawn half-brother—he had slowly taken me under his wing and, for the last six months, had been a person I could turn to and get help from.
Provided the name Lee Sejin wasn’t mentioned.
When it came to the father side of him, while he was making an effort, and I really was trying too, we were struggling.
The sticking point was Sejin.
I’d grown up in Chicago. I hadn’t even known who my father was until one day he’d turned up at my mom’s restaurant and told me I was coming ‘back’ to Seoul. It was only because of my mom asking me to try to make a relationship with him that I’d come.
Now I was here, and especially with H3RO, I wanted to stay in Seoul and stay at Atlantis.
But bonding with my father wasn’t easy when my older half-brother was a dick who had tried his best to get me to go back to America by paying some crazy fan to try to hurt me, and despite this, Woojin wouldn’t even fire him.
Sure, he’d exiled him to China, but he was out there in a seven-bedroom mansion running the Chinese division of the company.
Some punishment.
And, no matter what I said, did, or provided as evidence, Woojin wore blinkers.
It was the most infuriating thing about Woojin.
I took a deep breath. “How on earth does Sejin know about this?”
“Sejin has used the same party planners for the last eight years for all of the Atlantis events. He has built up an excellent relationship with them. You’re lucky that he stepped in and smoothed the waters with them.”
With another deep breath, I walked over to my desk and deposited my purse on it before I turned back to Woojin. “I overslept and missed the meeting. I didn’t cancel and Inhye tried to reschedule it for me. They are the ones who refused.”
“It’s irrelevant now. They are coming back in tomorrow.” Woojin walked over to me. He was tall, like Sejin and Seungjin. I must have inherited my height from my mother. The longer I was out here though, the more I was willing to accept there was a family resemblance between us.
Woojin held out his hand. In it was a memory stick.
I took it from him. “What’s this?”
“Pictures from the last few Halloween parties.”
Eyeing the memory stick in my hand, I curled my fingers around it before looking back at my father. “With all due respect, if we have a party planner organizing the whole thing, do I really need to be the one to oversee it? I have Cupcake’s comeback to organize, Zodiac have a two unit releases before Christmas, and then there’s the holiday single. Can’t this just be given to someone on the marketing team—or anyone other than me?”
As the Chairman of Atlantis, I knew he was involved in so much more than I was when it came to running the company, so he had to know how busy I was. And considering neither me nor H3RO were invited to it last year, it couldn’t have been that important.
“Each year, the Atlantis Halloween Party makes the top ten searches on SNS, as well as getting substantial media coverage. And each year, we get a boost to our stock prices,” Woojin informed me. “The guest list is worth its weight in gold, and our shareholders and stakeholders are kept happy, mingling with our idols and enjoying the party. This is too important for anyone else to do.”
“If it’s that important, why are we using a party planner? Surely it’s better for everything to be overseen internally?”
My point had been to try to show Woojin that actually I wasn’t integral to this process.
The second his eyes lit up, I knew I’d made a mistake. Whether it was the language—and I was now almost fluent in Korean—or just his interpretation, I wasn’t sure …
“If you would prefer to organize this event yourself, so be it.”
And just as I was going to correct him, he said the words that made me turn it into a challenge.
“But only if you are sure you can do a better job than Sejin.”
“Of course I can,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Woojin nodded, leaning over and pressing a kiss on my cheek. “I’m sure you can.” He straightened and walked towards the door. “Hopefully it won’t keep you too busy to stop you attending dinner next weekend.”
He left the room, closing the door behind him.
I slumped against the desk, staring at the memory stick. “Holly, you are a moron.” I ran a hand over my face. “I know what, I’ll organize the party. I’ve nothing else to do,” I said to myself in annoyingly perky voice.
OK, so maybe before I had walked into the office, I had been prepared to do just that, but now, not only had I had the chance to get the party planners back, I’d also essentially promised to deliver a party which had to be nothing less than epic to prove I was better than Sejin.
Moron was an understatement.
Just as I was about to hurl the memory stick across the room, which would have accomplished nothing other than providing me with a few seconds of satisfaction, there was a knock at the door.
“Hello?”
The door opened and an employee walked in, pushing a cart loaded with half a dozen boxes. He gave me a polite bow before addressing me. “This is the mail which was filtered before being passed to H3RO.”
“Thank you.”
As the employee backed out of the room, I set the memory stick on my desk and walked over to the boxes. Thankfully, they had made my job easy for me. There were seven boxes. Six labeled with each member’s name, and a seventh with the group.
Grabbing Kyun’s I carried it over to my coffee table and sat down on a couch.
The hell with the party.
Regardless of what my father thought, this was more important.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled the top off. The box was jammed full of envelopes of varying sizes and colors. From the few that were sticking out, I could see that they had been opened carefully and stamped twice. One to say received. One to say rejected.
I grabbed a handful, setting all but one in my lap.
Not long after discovering that H3RO had been getting and but never receiving fan mail, I’d also discovered that they’d been getting questionable mail too. While most of the mail was lovely and supportive, sometimes it got racy.
Unsurprisingly, Jun and Dante were happy to receive that, but the company policy was to reject it and I couldn’t really make an exception for them and no one else.
I also wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it personally, either. The guys were celebrities. They had thousands of fangirls and fanboys but it really didn’t bother me. They were H3RO when they were working, and then they were my Tae, Dante, Minhyuk, Nate, Kyun and Jun at home.
Seeing as though I had no idea what I was looking for, and none of the envelopes had return addresses, there was no other choice but to open them one by one.
They were awful.
I expected them to be. They weren’t given to H3RO for a reason.
But I think I had underestimated how hateful some people could be. There were so many of them telling him he had to lose weight, that he couldn’t sing, that he was the ugliest member of the group… and then there were the ones telling him to kill himself.
If this was what was in this box, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read the one from his father.
I must have scanned nearly forty letters like this before I found the letter I was looking for.
Thankfully, it wasn’t anywhere near as awful as the others. In fact, this one was almost polite. My guess was the mailroom had filtered it out because we had on record that Kyun’s father wasn’t part of his family anymore—and wouldn’t a family member go direct to their son instead of via the address for fan mail?
Now that I had a letter, it didn’t take me long to slip through the remaining pile, pulling out those with matching handwriting. There were three letters in total.
The rest of the letters were dumped, unceremoniously, back into the box. The mail room were doing a fantastic job and I was glad these were never making their way to H3RO—or any of the idols at Atlantis.
With the three letters from Kyun’s father, I returned to my desk and slipped them into my purse. I’d read enough hate mail for the day and I needed something cheerful in my life.
So I streamed the show Nate had left early to attend that morning. Watching H3RO perform, looking alive and happy on the stage—it was just what I needed.
I spent the afternoon trying to catch up on the work I had missed, until, around six, Inhye walked in the room. “I’m leaving, Holly.”
“Hot date?” I asked before looking over at her, just in time to catch her duck her head. For a while, Inhye had been dating one of the company lawyers, but they’d broken it off. The most I’d gotten out of her was that it was complicated, and she wouldn’t elaborate.
“You should go home too. Have an early night for once.”
“I was late this morning,” I reminded her.
“Maybe it was because you’re here so late at night?” She straightened her coat and readjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. “I know you have an important job, but you need some down time too. Trust me, call it a night.”
<
br /> I glanced at the spreadsheet in front of me. An evening off was certainly a more tempting option.
“You’ll thank me for it in the morning,” Inhye added before excusing herself.
There was a drama on Netflix that I had been wanting to watch since it came out, especially as it had one of the actors from Atlantis in it.
I could scout party locations and watch that at the same time…
Without giving myself the opportunity to change my mind, I turned off my monitor, gathered up the paperwork I would need, and grabbed my coat.
It wasn’t until I got to the car that I pulled out my phone and sent a message to the group chat. It had been quiet all afternoon, but that was nothing new considering they didn’t take their phones out to the fan signs. They’d be finishing soon.
The drive home was long thanks to bad traffic caused by heavy rain, and I was glad when I pulled into garage. An evening on the couch with that drama was feeling more and more like the right move—right after a hot bubble bath. Maybe even a bedtime before midnight.
That plan changed the moment I walked into the house.
Love Scenario
Rose petals lay over the floor in front of the door to the garage, leading into the house. I toed my shoes off and hung my coat up before following the path. At the bottom of the stairs, it forked, one path heading up, the other down the hallway to the dining room.
Hearing noise downstairs, I followed them into the dining room, finding the entire room lit by candles. The dining table we had was a large round one—I’d spent ages hunting that out—but two places had been set.
It looked beautiful and romantic, and completely unexpected.
Eager to find out who was behind it, I pushed open the door to the kitchen. Busy stirring something in a saucepan was Minhyuk. His long blond hair had been tied back, but he was still in the cream woolly sweater and pale denim jeans he had been wearing earlier.
He had music on and was rapping along to a song that was playing, completely oblivious to the fact I was home.
I leaned against the counter, watching as he wiggled his butt to the beat. My adorable Minhyuk.
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