Page 95 of The Comeback
I was going to be the best damn lawyer at Yesterly and Havings. Now I’m not sure that’s even what I want, so I might as well get a trip out of it.
There’s no way I’m bringing a souvenir back for Brytaghnghie, though.
Thirty
“Business class,” I say to Alex as we board, trying to hide my excitement. Stressed though I am about Jihoon, this is my first time on a plane. “Extravagant.”
“Company pays for the upgrade if a flight’s over eight hours,” he says complacently as he wipes down the armrests with enough sanitizer to make my eyes water.
I sit stiffly in the seat before slowly relaxing enough to take in my surroundings. The air smells oppressively neutral, and everyone is unpacking books and devices as they get comfortable for the trip. They all look bored.
I have a week’s work with Newlight before I meet with Hana, which I’m thrilled about. Our trips to Korea overlap, and I’ve taken some vacation days (screw you, Yesterly and Havings) so we can explore Seoul before she goes south to Busan. Hana didn’t mention meeting with Jihoon or the strangeness of me taking vacation days in a very obvious way that makes it clear she’s waiting for me to bring it up.
I poke the bag stuffed under the seat in front of me with my toe. It’s filled with work files I should go through, but I was up late last night paging through documents, and I want a break. The problem is, if I don’t work, I brood about whether I should have told Jihoon that I’ll be in Seoul.
Because I didn’t. I have no idea what I even want. To meet? To talk? And say what?
Alex was kind enough to give me the window seat, and I make the best of it, craning my head to look at the runway and the surrounding dry brown grass. I’m about to pull out the in-flight magazine to see what restaurants they recommend in Phnom Penh when the screen in front of me flickers to life with the safety video. It’s in Korean and subtitled in English.
I blink, and Alex makes a strangled noise beside me. “No way,” he manages to get out. “That’s not…”
“It is.” It’s StarLune, dressed in dapper suits and singing about where the exits are on this airplane.
He elbows me. “Breathe,” he says as Daehyun goes into a rap to inform me that in times of emergency, my seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.
Alex and I watch the rest of the video, which includes a huge dancing life vest and a trippy segment of them going down the inflatable slides to land on what looks like Jupiter. I pray the plane doesn’t crash for real because I haven’t absorbed any of this life-saving instruction. Jihoon looks…good. He looks incredible.
At my most crass level, I can’t believe I tapped that. More importantly, I’m kicking myself for being such a coward and letting him go without a fight. He was right. I made excuses because I didn’t have the courage to take a risk.
Worse, I didn’t let him go. Imadeit happen. It was 100 percent all my fault.
My seat rumbles under me, and I have a moment of fear. Soon I’ll be in the air, dependent on technology and the human understanding of aerodynamics to keep me alive. All Jihoon-related thoughts disappear as the plane taxis forever before it accelerates. Everyone still looks bored.
I turn to Alex, who laughs when he sees me. “Liftoff never gets old for me either,” he says. Then he passes me some gum. “For your ears.”
I know the exact moment the plane tilts up to the sky as it lifts off and briefly wonder if the tail will hit the ground. Then we’re travelling up, and I nearly dislocate my neck to watch as the city below transforms into a map. We circle around over the long lines of the highways, ovals of running tracks, and even little dots of aquamarine from people’s pools. When we go higher, I realize for the first time that fog is actually a low cloud. I’ve been walking through clouds. We keep climbing until even the clouds are under us, strangely solid in appearance.
Only then do I sit back with a smile. Alex says something, but between my ears and the roar inside the plane—I didn’t know it would be this loud—I can’t hear him. He gives me a thumbs-up, and I nod.
By the time there’s a glass of white wine and a package of rice crackers in front of me, I’ve calmed down enough to not look out the window every minute, since it’s all the same cloud cover. I click through the movies, but there’s nothing I want to watch, even if I could hear the dialogue. Alex is already asleep beside me.
With my airplane amusement options exhausted, I decide now is the perfect time to do something I’ve been avoiding. Alex had told me to check out some StarLune fan accounts for research, even though we’d be working with Newlight’s other groups. It’s a work thing, I assure myself. Not a weird stalker thing.
I go to StarLune’s social media. It’s mostly staged photos and selfies, so I scroll down to the comments. Although the vast majority are emojis and GIFs, there are a few thoughtful ones that I investigate.
Thanks to the in-flight Wi-Fi, the next hour is eye-opening as I follow messages and replies and comments. Plenty celebrate StarLune’s outlandish good looks, but countless others talk about the music and its impact. The best thread I find says,moots, what’s been the best thing about having @_starlune_ in your life?
The first post is a GIF of a sweaty Jihoon dancing, and I linger onthis before moving on. The tweet has over five thousand replies, and they range froma playlist that got my lazy ass to the gymtoI was in a really bad place and their lyrics saved my life.
Lifting my eyes to the screen on the chair in front of me, which shows a little airplane zooming its way westward toward the Pacific, I’m forced to the difficult conclusion that I am a child. Not even a child. I am the insecure emo teenager glaring out under overgrown bangs who hates everything on principle so I can feel superior. I can’t do that anymore because Jihoon is, factually, a cultural icon for a reason. Despite my averred dislike for celebrity culture, when I scroll through the comments, I have to admit that my legal career, which for the most part involves helping the rich get richer, is not having this level of positive impact on the world.
Although slightly proud of myself for reaching this breakthrough of self-discovery, I don’t like it. I’m a lawyer. I look at the facts. I didn’t do that with Jihoon because I let my preconceptions get in the way of learning. I’m ashamed of myself for not giving Jihoon’s work the respect it deserves. Worse, not even the consideration that it needed respect. I didn’t think about his work past the fame, and I wonder if our conversation at the airport would have been different if I had.
Alex wakes up and grabs a squished-looking bottle of water that pops back into its regular shape once he cracks it open. He glances at my phone after he takes a few sips. “Turning into a Starry?”
“No!” I flip the phone over. “Research, like you told me.”
He smiles smugly. “You tell yourself that.”
