IN WHICH … Olivia considers everything
FEATURING … Olivia Olayemi, The Year 2000 ensemble
WORD COUNT … 1.8k
The Year 2000 was dead in the water, and Olivia felt like she was the only person who recognized it. Over the past two years, the ship that was the band had begun to sink like a stone, and she was left searching desperately for any way out, because she wasn't Sela, and she didn't intend to go down with the ship.
Olivia pulled herself out of her nautical metaphor and into the reality that was their current meeting with their label's executives. Sela usually handled all of this herself. By now, Olivia knew, although she couldn't understand, that Sela loved this monthly verbal sparring about their music and their future and how they were really fine to continue with the three of them and no new members were necessary. It was a bad sign that the entire band was forced to attend this meeting. Phoenix was there too, and he wasn't even a real member.
He was also the current topic of conversation. Sela insisted that they had removed him from their line up months ago, and the two executives—middle-aged white men who were both named John—insisted that she didn't have the power to do that. They were like a series of broken records, repeating the same phrase as if they didn't know what else to say.
Across the table, Rian pointed two fingers in the shape of a gun to his temple, and mimed pulling the trigger. Olivia kicked his knee, and he switched to flipping her off.
John 1, who sat directly next to Rian, frowned at her, even as he told Sela she didn't get to choose her own lineup. It sounded more and more ridiculous each time the words came out of his mouth.
“Olivia,” Jon 2 said, and the sound of her name cut her out of her reverie.
“Yes,” she answered. She knew immediately what they wanted to talk about.
“We’ve heard about your new venture,” he said, frowning at her in the exact same way John 1 had mere minutes ago.
She didn’t defend herself, because she didn’t need to. She had read their contract extensively, checking and double checking the loophole that allowed her to accept Andrew’s offer. As long as she didn’t compose or produce anything for The Undesirables, she was in the clear. It didn’t matter anyway—Andrew had his own vision, and it left Olivia feeling as if she was swapping one dictatorship for another.
John 2 gestured around the table, clearly annoyed. "If anyone else is planning on pulling the same move, we'd appreciate a heads up before your name and face appear on billboards. You still have one more album with us."
Olivia wondered, not for the first time, if there were any more loopholes they had yet to exploit. Their first album had been a real release, when they were all too naive, drunk on the thought of having finally made it big. Except they weren’t that famous, unless Andrew’s name and kpop group were also in the picture, and the euphoria had worn off after a matter of weeks. Their second album was re-release of their very first, from so many years ago, and if they were smart and had known better, they would have stopped there. But they didn’t, and then the Johns took over the label, and Jackson walked out of their lives, and now they were trapped.
Sela leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “We have a new album. We’ve had one for a year now.”
The Johns exchanged glances, and John 1 cleared his throat before he spoke. “It’s not what we’re looking for right now.”
It was never going to be what they were looking for, unless they could somehow travel back to 1995. It wasn’t catchy or vapid enough to go viral, and every song was over three and a half minutes, and they hadn’t stitched it together piecemeal based on what a social media audience wanted to hear. All three of them had balked at the last strategy, Sela most of all.
“I remember you said that last month,” Sela said. She tilted her head. “Or maybe it was the month before that? Or, I don't know, every month for the past year?”
“We're looking for something different,” John 2 said.
“You can say you're looking for a viral TikTok song,” Sela countered. “I'm not offended by that. I'm offended by you thinking we're willing to do that for you.”
Both Johns frowned at her. “Now, Sela—” John 2 started before he was interrupted.
“Can we leave?” Rian asked, and everyone turned to look at him.
Olivia was horrified. The Johns were their bosses. Shitty bosses, but their bosses, nonetheless. “He doesn't mean it,” she said quickly, trying to salvage the situation.
“No, Liv, I do mean it. According to Sela, this has been going on for a year.” Rian gestured vaguely to their group sitting around the table. “You can tell her the same thing next month. You can keep this up for as long as you want, but we're not sacrificing ourselves for you. Is there anything different we need to discuss?” He emphasized the word different, and Olivia thought he might actually have a death wish.
The Johns gawked, maybe because those were the most words they’d ever heard Rian say at once.
John 1 cleared his throat. “As you said, we’ll be able to discuss this again next month with Sela. Until then, we’d like all four of you to consider what we said today.”
All four of them weren’t considering anything at all. It was if the Johns were oblivious to anything anyone other than the two of them had said over the past half an hour. It might have been the longest half an hour of Olivia’s life.
Rian was already thumbing his vape as they left the building. Olivia eyed the fluorescent plastic. “You can’t do that,” she said.
“Not in your car. Ten minutes, Liv?” he asked.
She acquiesced, maybe too easily. “Fine. But if you’re not at the car in ten minutes, we’re leaving.”
It wasn't an empty threat. She had left people behind before, and she’d do it again to keep her schedule. She turned to Sela next. “We need to talk.”
They had danced around the topic of The Undesirables for months, ever since Olivia had told her she had accepted Andrew's offer. All she needed was ten minutes to talk about it, and the opportunity had fallen right into her lap.
Sela nodded, and they left Rian on the curb, setting off around the block.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, because it seemed like the best place to start. She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets. Even after all these years, she wasn’t used to temperatures below 60 degrees. The skyscrapers funneled the wind between them, which didn’t help her at all.
“For what? You know what the Johns are like.”
“Not that. My second job.” Olivia couldn’t say their name, not in front of Sela.
“That?” Sela asked derisively. “I don’t care about that.” She couldn’t say their name either, and Olivia could hear the unspoken “anymore” at the end of her sentence.
“I’m glad you got out,” she continued. “I wish we all could.”
Sela hadn’t said it, and would probably never say it, but Olivia knew that not receiving the same invitation from Andrew hurt her. She also knew that hell would freeze over before Sela would agree to put her own ego aside for someone else’s vision.
“Does fame treat you well?” Sela asked.
Olivia shook her head. “It’s too early for that,” she said, even as she knew this new project would be more successful than The Year 2000 could have ever dreamed of, and that they were already there in a fraction of the time. She had a sudden vision of never being able to have a normal conversation with Sela again, the two of them constantly orbiting, but never really visiting any important topic.
“Actually, it’s different,” Olivia said, wishing she could take her words back. She really wasn’t famous, because this was New York, after all, and no one cared. “There’s a lot of support. It’s not much of an achievement, but this label seems better than the Johns.”
“Your standards are so low.”
Olivia changed the topic back. “You really aren’t mad at me for saying yes?”
They were nearly at the parking garage now. She wondered how Rian was doing.
“I was last year,” Sela admitted. “Why did you do it?”
“I still don’t know,” Olivia answered, as honest as she could be without upsetting Sela. There were a lot of factors that led to her decision, and all of them felt like excuses. She wanted to try something different. She was tired of the Johns. She was tired of the same songs and the same shows for the same audiences. She was always the adult friend and the organized one and the one with her life perfectly put together and she didn’t know if she wanted to be that person forever. She might be having a midlife crisis, and soon she might want to move to the suburbs and settle down and she had to live her whole life before that.
Sela probably didn’t believe her, but she didn’t say anything, just pushed open the door to the parking structure and made a beeline for Olivia’s car.
Rian wasn’t there yet, and Sela called shotgun with an obvious glee. She folded the passenger seat of Olivia’s Supra down and pushed it forward, eagerly awaiting his arrival.
He was only a couple minutes behind them, stopping in his tracks and when he saw what awaited him.
Sela gestured towards the backseat, and he shook his head.
Olivia sighed.
Rian headed toward them, talking as he went. “You sat in the passenger seat on the way here.”
“I got here first, which means I get to choose first,” Sela argued back, hands planted on her hips.
Olivia let them argue as she climbed into the driver's seat. They would figure it out, or she would reach over and close the door and leave them both here. She gave them another minute. They were locked in a silent standoff. Even from the back, she could tell Sela was glaring at Rian.
She started the engine, and leaned over the center console to watch Rian flip Sela off and climb into the backseat.
Within minutes they had assumed their usual positions: Olivia inching the car through traffic, Sela flipping through Olivia’s CD collection as if she didn’t know the contents by heart, and Rian flicking mindlessly through his phone. It was normal and comfortable and Olivia couldn’t tell if she wanted it to last forever. She told herself she made the right choice, and she could only hope that it wouldn’t become another regret.
SINGLETON is the debut studio album of rock band THE UNDESIRABLES. Released on Valentine’s Day, it was preceded by three singles, all named after different dating apps. The album established the band’s partially sincere, partially ironic exploration of romance in the twenty-first century. It was written and produced almost single-handedly by lead vocalist Andrew. Their music style so far is best described as indie pop rock with occasional influences from shoegaze, dream pop and the 80s and 90s in general. Individually, they’ve named Slowdive (Andrew), Metric (Eunice), Pulp (Olivia), and Panic! At The Disco from 2004 to 2009 (Nick) as some of their major influences.
The album’s marketing was mostly analog, consisting of posters and advertisements around New York City, which left fans to pick up the slack online. The band’s social media accounts would re-post pictures of the ads taken by fans, but only if they were good pictures. It looked cheap, but was actually fairly expensive with a bill only a major label could foot, a confusing decision to just about everyone.
NOW PLAYING ... 1. Nobody Likes the Opening Band / 2. *Unhinged / 3. Affection / 4. *Fumble / 5. Good Enough / 6. Growing Pains / 7. *Tinderhooks / 8. A Kiss / 9. Retry / 10. In the Modern World / 11. Control
[ 1 ] UNHINGED — The first single predated the album by three months. Named after Hinge, it's about rejecting dating culture entirely. It was met with lukewarm success, which is to say the only people who listened to it from the beginning were Fable fans. The music video features only three out of the four band members, as it was filmed before Eunice joined. Andrew spends the song’s run-time attempting to break up a happy couple, played by Olivia and Nick. It was obviously the cheapest video of the singles.
[ 2 ] FUMBLE — The second single, named after Bumble, released a month later and was only slightly more popular than their first song. The music video utilizes video game-style dialogue as it follows Andrew making terrible choices that always result in him being rejected by potential partners. The rest of the band, including Eunice this time, try and fail to guide him into successfully landing a date. It caused so much second hand embarrassment that many viewers failed to notice he attempted to court an equal number of women and men.
[ 3 ] TINDERHOOKS — The third single was inspired by Tinder and the phrase “on tenterhooks.” It was released a week before the full album, and easily eclipsed the popularity of the first two songs for one reason—Andrew spends about half the music video making out with several people. Top comments included “HE’S BISEXUAL????” (10.5k likes) and “yeah he’s bisexual obviously no one listened to fumble” (4.3k likes and a boost in “Fumble” streams).
[ 4 ] THE INDUSTRY PLANT ALLEGATIONS — Even before the album’s release, the band was plagued with accusations of being industry plants. From an outside, objective standpoint, it almost sounded plausible. They were a newly formed group—so new, in fact, that they released a song before adding another member—who were set to release an album from a major label in a few months. The majority of these claims were explored in a YouTube video essay where the original poster did so much research it bordered on stalking, and discovered that the band’s label’s founder’s niece went to the same college around the same time as Olivia, Andrew, and Nick. The connection was tenuous and the method of its discovery off-putting, and most people soon moved on.
[ 5 ] THE YOON SIBLINGS — Shortly after “Unhinged” released, former Fable member Mingeun was one of the first former Fable members to publicly post about Andrew’s new endeavor. Upon seeing this first Instagram story, fans assumed he was supporting Andrew. That tended to last all of five seconds before they clicked to his second Instagram story that simply read, in white text on a plain black background, “that’s my sister LOL.” The band members themselves learned this not long before the general public.
[ 6 ] I ATTENDED AN UNDESIRABLES CONCERT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS REVIEW — The most negative review by far was written by a journalist who attended one of the first shows after the band's first single. They played most of the songs on the album, but they also had a decent amount of time to talk. With the exception of Eunice, they talked a lot. This article specifically notes that Nick shared a number of anecdotes about their shared college days that no one else seemed to remember, and Andrew and Olivia helped a fan with her high school English homework on stage, all while complaining about being old.
[ 7 ] PITCHFORK — Pitchfork gave the album a 6.8 out of 10. Their review is notable for saying out loud what many people had on their minds—the first half is fairly cohesive and the second half is “shoved together with all the care of a k-pop album.” Some of the songs borrowed heavy influences from Andrew’s favorite genres, some of the songs could fit in on a Fable album if the lyrics were in Korean, and probably all of the songs failed to make the cut onto one of Andrew’s two previous solo albums. Regardless, most fans consider an almost 7 good, considering the tongue-in-cheek nature of the album. One online post summed it up succinctly as, “ofc they didn’t like it everyone knows pitchfork hates having fun.”
[ 8 ] THE UNDESIRABLES BREAK DOWN THEIR DEBUT STUDIO ALBUM — In an interview with Billboard, all four members discussed the band’s formation and the creation of their album. It was a long article, accompanied by an equally long video. As per usual, they had a lot to talk about. In all likelihood, Andrew, as the only lyricist, fed the rest of the band their lines when it came to talking about their songs. They also mentioned “starting over” and “second chances” more than a few times. Olivia was adamant that none of them were having a mid-life crisis yet. She then followed that up by picking Andrew as the most likely person to have a mid-life crisis first.
[ 9 ] WORST PODCAST EVER — If there was any single time fans wished Andrew had less media training and was generally less nice, it would be his solo guest experience on music podcast On the Record. Despite starting off in an unassuming manner, the host quickly veered towards asking Andrew a series of questions that wouldn’t be out of place in a typical “dark side of k-pop” exposé. How did being an idol stifle his creative expression? Given that he wrote half of his group’s music, it didn’t. Was he overcompensating now because he wasn’t allowed to date for ten years? He was doing what he always wanted to do, and he wasn’t compensating for anything. In the video version of the same episode, Andrew can be seen waving away someone off screen multiple times during this segment.
[ 10 ] BLIND KARAOKE — Once they ran out of things to talk about—about a month—they filled the downtime by blindfolding one another and then picking or letting the audience pick a song for them to sing. The second option was removed after the audience kept picking Fable songs for Andrew. He didn’t even recognize some of them. They also used the set up as a transition between songs. It was a good bit until Nick started singing “Party in the USA” every time he didn’t know a song, and Olivia was given increasingly obscure songs that no one else knew.
[ 11 ] “TINDERHOOKS” MV DISCOURSE — The discussions surrounding “Tinderhooks” began as soon as the music video released. Was Andrew actually bisexual? Was he doing it for the bit? They seemed to have a lot of bits. For everything else the band talked about during their live shows and interviews, no one said a word about Andrew’s sexuality and pretended to not have heard anything whenever it was brought up. Obviously, this also means the Andrew/Haksu shippers were right all along.
Jesse Ball, The Divers' Game // Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights // Richard Siken, Crush // Yelena Moskovich, A Door Behind A Door // vidhic0re on Pinterest (I don't believe they post anywhere else!) // Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena // @lucidloving, "The Last Person to Know You" // Red – Same Disease // Hera Lindsay Bird, "Mirror Traps" // @lucidloving, "You Only Want to Hold My Hand, Right?"
Your Uber was supposed to have arrived three minutes ago. You paced back and forth on the sidewalk, trying to stay warm, gloved hands buried deep in your coat pockets. You didn’t normally pay attention to all the papers stapled or taped to telephone poles. Now that you stood here, one of them caught your eye. This one looked like a profile for a dating app, and you had some experience using those. There were a series of perforated tabs at the bottom, flapping in the breeze. Half of them read “LEFT” in all capital letters, and the other half read “RIGHT.” A few of them were missing. It was an analog way of swiping left or right, you realized.
You took a step closer, and braced one hand against the piece of paper in order to rip off one of the tabs.
You chose
LEFT
RIGHT
Voting ended onJan 5
You gripped your prize carefully in one gloved hand. It fluttered in the wind. There was a QR code on the back, you noticed, along with a date: Valentine’s day.
A car honked. You looked up to see a car idling in front of you. A white Camry, license plate KXL 5739—your Uber. You jammed the piece of paper into your pocket and got in the car.
IN WHICH … Eunice’s worlds collide.
FEATURING … Eunice Yoon, Andrew Han, Mingeun Yoon
WORD COUNT … 3.6k
Eunice was in a band for all of almost one week when she forgot to silence her phone before a studio practice. Her ringtone—one of the default Apple ones—blared through the small space.
“Sorry,” she said as their practice ground to a halt, hurrying to lift her guitar over her head and pass it to Andrew, who held out his hand without saying anything.
She rushed over to the small pile of their belongings by the door, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, digging through her purse until she found the offending object. She silenced it without looking at the caller ID. It was probably a spam call anyway. Hardly anyone ever called her.
She took her guitar back, settled her left hand against its frets, and tried to remember exactly where in the song they were.
“Let’s start from the top,” Andrew said, and Eunice strained to catch even the slightest hint of irritation or anger.
They made it as far as the first chorus before Andrew’s phone lit up. It was silent, but it lay flat on the ground, illuminating the dirt and grime on the side of Nick’s backpack. Eunice was the first to notice, her pick faltering in a mistake she knew they all heard. She tried not to grimace and kept playing.
They finished the song, and moved on to the next one. Her gaze was almost always fixed on Andrew’s phone. The screen would go dark for no more than thirty seconds—the length of a chorus—before lighting up with some other notification.
“You should answer that,” Olivia said at the end of the song.
Andrew fit his microphone back in the stand. “This is embarrassing,” he said, but he stepped off the stage and answered his phone.
Eunice stretched her fingers, grateful for the break. Studio time was expensive, and so they always tried to play straight through their sessions. It was good practice for their future shows, and Eunice would rather have her fingers cramp now than on a stage.
She didn’t think much of Andrew’s call, sidling closer to Olivia, until he said, “I didn’t know she was your sister.” In Korean.
Her head snapped up towards him, like a sleeper agent suddenly activated after so many dormant years. She didn’t know Andrew spoke Korean. He didn’t seem like the type, and since she was fairly Westernized herself, she hadn’t bothered to ask.
“What’s going on with him?” she heard Nick mutter from the back of the room.
“Fine. How was I supposed to know? Should I give her the phone?” Andrew, in English again.
Maybe Eunice dreamed it. Maybe she spent too much time practicing and was having language hallucinations, but Andrew was beckoning her over, and so she placed her guitar flat on the ground and stepped down off the practice stage.
He held out his phone. “It’s your brother.”
Eunice only had one brother. Frowning, she took it, saw the contact name Mingeun Yoon front and center on the screen, and lifted it to her ear. “Oppa?”
“Why are you in Andrew’s fucking band?” Mingeun demanded.
“I don’t understand,” she said, turning her back on the rest of the room. “How do you know him? Why does he have your number?”
She was increasingly cognizant of the fact that Andrew could understand her half of the conversation.
“Of course he didn’t tell you.” Mingeun sounded almost amused. It was a little scary, but Eunice wasn’t going to tell him that. “When did you learn to play the guitar? I didn’t know you were interested in music.”
“That’s none of your business,” she hissed into the phone. “Tell me how you know Andrew, and I’ll tell you why I joined his band.”
She could feel the eyes of the other band members on her back, and hear the muted tones of their indistinct conversation.
“We were in the same idol group,” her brother said, and as soon as he finished his sentence, she hung up the phone.
She would deal with Mingeun later. All she ever wanted was something that was her own, and once she finally embraced something she truly enjoyed, it was only natural that her brother would interrupt to ruin it all. Nick’s offer had sounded too good to be true, and it was.
Eunice could never have any interests related to music, because that was Mingeun’s domain, and their mother had always been so proud of his trainee status and later his idol status. She was too young to remember the first few years after he was scouted for herself, the years where he’d spend summers in Korea with their aunt and uncle. Her mother spoke about it often enough for Eunice to pretend to remember, about how successful he was at such a young age with such a clear vision for his future.
She marched up to Andrew and dropped his phone into his hand. She looked him in the eye—almost craning her neck—and shoved all thoughts of Fable from her mind. “Let’s practice.”
As their practice drew to a close, Eunice tried to escape the room as quickly as possible. She cleaned up as fast as she possibly could, all of her wires impossibly tangled into one giant knot that she would regret by their next practice. There was more to this complicated truth she wanted to drag out of either Mingeun or Andrew. Not Mingeun, she decided, picking up her bag and blocking his number. He would want to know too much about her, what she was doing and if she was still in school and how she learned to play the guitar.
She said a few terse goodbyes—it was the middle of the week, and Nick had to work tomorrow, which was the only reason the four of them wouldn’t spend another few hours together in some forced team building activities—and left without much fanfare.
She heard footsteps immediately in her wake, and could guess who they belonged to. She didn’t turn around, but asked to the nighttime air, “Why didn’t you say you were in Fable?”
The denizens of New York City had seen stranger things than a young woman carrying a guitar case speaking to herself.
“It wasn’t important,” Andrew said from her right, having caught up to her easily. He was about a foot taller than her, and seemed to only have to take one step for every two of hers. “He never mentioned me?”
“Why would we talk about you?” Eunice had never been interested in Mingeun’s idol group, and there were too many of them to keep track of. Her brother was controversial enough on his own, and it was enough for her to try to keep up with him. She didn’t talk to Mingeun about most things, anyway. It was only when the two of them or their other family members happened to be in the same city when they’d finally interact.
“You said you were from Seattle.”
“I lied. It’s easier that way.” They were almost at the subway station. She hoped Andrew lived in the opposite direction on a completely different line.
“That sounds like something Mingeun would say.”
Eunice stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. More than one person swore at her, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Or move. She felt rooted to the spot, paralyzed with anger.
“Don't compare me to him. I don't know what kind of relationship you had with him, but I'm not interested in being some kind of surrogate Mingeun.”
“I never said you were.” Andrew was calm. Too calm. “You aren’t that much like him. He doesn’t let people in easily.”
She couldn’t decide if she wanted to hear more about her brother from him or not. She liked Andrew. He was kind, skilled, and only a little pretentious. She had a difficult time picturing Mingeun getting along with him, but it wasn’t as if she knew her own brother all that well.
Eunice gripped her guitar case tighter and forced her legs to move again. She managed to make it into the subway station before Andrew spoke again.
“Do you want to quit?” he asked. “If you do, I understand. I know we have a contract, but I’m sure Kay can find you a way out if you want it.”
She was beginning to think he took her for an idiot, or at the very least, someone who needed to be coddled. There was so much she couldn't tell him, so she didn't. Like how soon after she had been invited to join, she had spoken to Kay on her own and told her she would need the label to sponsor a work visa for her after she graduated to be able to stay in the country. Kay had bitched about it, but more along the lines of why nothing could be easy with Andrew. Eunice was still here, and she didn't intend to leave.
“No,” she said, trying her best to imbue a single word with as much derision as possible. It was a stupid suggestion, and she wanted him to know that.
She tapped her phone against the scanner and pushed her way through the turnstile.
Andrew followed her all the way to her platform. She hoped they weren't neighbors.
“I'll be fine,” she said brusquely. “I don't want to leave. I just need some time to think about this.”
“Sure,” he said. “As much time as you need.”
She peered down the tracks, trying to spot the lights of an incoming train.
“Is this also your train?” Eunice asked.
He shook his head. “I live on the Upper West Side,” he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
That night, Eunice lay in bed and did a Google search for Andrew Han. She probably should have done it long ago, when Nick first introduced them, just to make sure she wasn't about to be kidnapped or scammed. She read his Wikipedia article, which was short and didn’t say much. She couldn’t read his Namuwiki article, so she didn’t. She scrolled through his Instagram, which should have been a hint all along, given that he had almost four million followers. He wasn’t a frequent poster, and it wasn’t long before she reached the point at which Fable must have disbanded, and she saw him and Mingeun in the same picture, at opposite ends of their group.
She stared at the photo for a long time, longer than she'd like to admit. Then she swiped through the rest of the pictures in the post, snapshots of Andrew and Mingeun and their group members sharing meals or taking group selfies in front of the mirror of a dance studio. There was more where that came from the further back she scrolled.
Eventually, Eunice found her way to a music video from—she checked the video description—six years ago. It was from the time when Mingeun had taken a break and returned home, only for him to spend much of his time in Minah’s apartment. Eunice was never invited to Minah's apartment. Then he used their dad's credit card to buy a plane ticket back to Korea, and Eunice was left the sole witness and audience to their mom's tirades.
She stared at Andrew on her phone screen, noticeably younger and maybe happier. Or he was a good actor. The song did nothing for her—quiet and tinny from her phone's speaker. Eunice always thought their concept was cheesy—history lessons with no discernable audience. Surely their domestic fans had no need to take instructions from some idols.
She sorted their YouTube channel by popularity and skipped everything that resembled a music video or a song. There was so much to see—hours and hours of videos of what might have been every second of Fable's career. She had always known that it existed, but she had never been tempted to seek it out. She didn't talk about Mingeun or to Mingeun, and that meant she had no idea what being a kpop idol entailed.
That was when she stumbled on a video titled, “In Full Bloom.” It was forty-five minutes and featured Andrew’s face in the center of the thumbnail. She checked the time. She had class tomorrow, and watching an almost hour long video about her new band member was perhaps not the best decision she had ever made. She clicked play.
It was aboit the making of Fable’s second album, which seemed to be about pears. She wasn't going to judge. She watched Andrew discuss the first song, about the experience of being ghosted. That made Eunice almost snort with laughter, because she was mostly certain that men like Andrew Han did not get ghosted. He was too good at everything.
She watched his easy banter with his old group members like a hawk. Would this happen to her too someday, the seemingly intimate moments of late night practices and recording sessions immortalized forever in a YouTube video? The subtitles called him Yejun, but the people called him Andrew in a casual and personal way. He seemed so confident and capable, even when presenting the album to a man that must have been his boss. Andrew had done the same thing to Eunice right before she accepted the offer, using PowerPoint to introduce him and Olivia and Nick and discuss his plans for their first album. Old habits died hard, it seemed.
She skipped the rest of the video in favor of a fan compilation of “minjun moments that give me life.” It was a poor decision in her night of poor decisions. She saw Andrew practically read Mingeun's mind, covertly nudging him in one direction or another before he said something stupid. She watched them lower their voices in group conversations and speak in a mangled, bastardized combination of English and French while the Korean subtitles struggled to catch up.
It was all too intimate. It felt like she didn’t know the people on her phone screen, and one of them was her own brother. Eunice tried to ignore the hollow feeling in her stomach, the one that accompanied the realization that there were so many people who might know her brother better than she did. One of them was probably Andrew, and she had no idea what to make of that.
She swallowed down her nausea and fell asleep with a video still playing, resolving to speak with Mingeun tomorrow.
Tomorrow came and went, as did the next tomorrow and the one after that, and soon Eunice began to feel like Macbeth.
“That’s enough for today,” Andrew said a little more than halfway through one of their private lessons. They had to have these because Eunice was already behind and trying desperately not to fall farther behind.
She looked at the time. “I have half an hour until my next class.”
Andrew's mouth was set in a grim line. “We have half an hour to talk to Mingeun. He's at the coffee shop across the street.”
Eunice started, her guitar case almost slipping from her hands. “He's here?”
“Apparently he hitched a ride with our ex-labelmates. Long story.” He didn’t look particularly thrilled by this development.
They finished cleaning up in silence, and Eunice made sure to prop the door open as they left. Practice rooms at her school were a hot commodity, and she wasn’t even studying music. It was free, and that was why she liked it.
She also liked the independent coffee shop across the street, and the fact that it wasn’t a Starbucks. It would be a tragedy if she liked it less in the future because of Mingeun. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and pushed open the door.
She spotted him immediately. Mingeun sat alone at a table for four, earbuds snaking from his phone to his ears. An iced coffee sat, three-quarters full, in front of him, and a permanent scowl etched itself on his forehead.
“I’ll get us something to drink,” Andrew said, before disappearing and leaving Eunice alone.
She sat down across from Mingeun and watched as he took his earbuds out. She wasn’t going to speak first. He was supposed to be more of an adult than she was.
“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked. Clearly, “this” was something he didn’t understand.
Eunice stared down at the table. “Because I wanted to try it,” she said softly. She had no desire to tell him the entire story.
“You wanted to learn how to play the guitar and you wanted to join Andrew’s band.”
“I guess so,” she said with a shrug.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“How did you meet him?” Mingeun finally asked.
“He’s friends with my boss.”
“You’re friendly with your boss? That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
She shrugged again, and a matcha latte appeared at her elbow.
"It looks like everything is going well," Andrew's voice said from above her. "You don't need me here."
Mingeun stood and grabbed Andrew by the wrist so quickly Eunice barely comprehended it. His chair screeched back with an awful, ugly sound. "I'm supposed to be the one who always tries to run. Sit down."
Eunice did her best not to stare as Andrew obeyed him. He took the seat next to Mingeun, and placed a brown paper bag in the middle of the table. “If you want to eat something.”
Mingeun sat and pulled the bag toward himself and peered inside. "You were going to eat all of this yourself?"
"It isn't that much. A croissant is not going to kill you," Andrew said.
Mingeun scowled, leaned back in his seat, and flicked the bag over to Eunice. "I'm not hungry."
She was. She used the napkin in the bag to pull out one of the two croissants. And if she was eating, she didn't have to talk.
"Eunice was going to speak with you," Andrew said. "You didn't have to come all the way to New York."
Eunice was not going to speak with him, but she thought the same. There was once an ocean and almost the entire North American continent between them, and now there was nothing but the plastic table of a college neighborhood coffee shop.
“I decided it might be a good time to visit my baby sister and one of my good friends.”
“And TMT is performing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade next week,” Andrew said, a sentence that Eunice could only partially comprehend.
Mingeun nodded, poking at the ice in his cup with his straw. “That’s happening too.”
She had a hard time believing him. “The last time you were supposed to visit me, you ditched me right before dinner with Mom.”
That was a few years ago, during her undergrad and one of Fable’s world tours. She had been less than thrilled at the prospect of dinner with their mother, but comforted by the thought that Mingeun would be there with her. Then he hadn’t shown up, and she had to explain to the restaurant through her mortification that there would only be two people dining that evening despite their reservation for three. The only communication either of them received from Mingeun that night was a vague text saying that something had come up and he couldn’t make it. Which was obvious, when he wasn’t at the restaurant.
Mingeun winced. “I forgot about that.” He turned to Andrew. “How did you just happen to recruit my sister?”
“We talked about this already,” Andrew said. “I met her through a friend, and then I texted you, and you basically told me Eunice is a common name and I shouldn’t worry about it.”
Eunice chewed her croissant. “It is a common name,” she agreed. She knew another Eunice in high school, also the daughter of Korean immigrants, and two more in her various college classes.
“I don’t know why this matters so much,” she continued. She told Andrew she needed some time to think about it, and now she had thought about it, and she had come to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter and her brother might be in the process of becoming their parents. He had his own life in a different country, a world away from what Eunice wanted to do.
And then—to Mingeun—”You didn’t know what I was doing until I started doing things w I was doing or what I was interested in until Andrew happened to be part of it. You don’t care about us because of me. You care about us because of him,” she said, voicing her thoughts as they occurred to her. Maybe the Minjun shippers were correct, and the two of them had some unfathomably deep bond no mere mortal could comprehend.
The weight of her accusation hung heavy in the air. Andrew spoke first. “I think she’s right,” he said, like Eunice wasn’t even there. “You care about us in relation to one another, not individually.”
That wasn’t what she said, but she let it slide. She thought Andrew meant well.
Mingeun glared at her, his gaze cold and unsettling. Eunice looked away first.
“Fine,” he said finally. “If that’s what you think. I still think it’s weird.”
He stood abruptly, his drink still half full, clearly signaling an end to the conversation. That worked for Eunice, because she had a class to get to soon.
“You won’t tell Mom, right?” she asked suddenly.
“That you decided to join my former group member’s band? No. She’d make it my fault, somehow. You can tell her yourself,” Mingeun said.
He pointed to Andrew with his drink. “And if you do anything else weird, I’ll sic Haksu-hyung on you.”
fcble deleted their account 😔 idk if the creator will see this but i assure them that they'll be dearly missed and if they ever make a comeback that we would be so so happy
confession # 124
great news wren and andrew han can be found at @undsireds !
James was seated at your usual table when you arrived, flushed with excitement and at least one drink. “I have it on good authority that the Kellys won’t be here tonight. They’re on a cruise in the Bahamas.”
The Kellys were one of the two retired couples that showed up every month without fail and vied for first place. The other couple was the Ferruccis, who were currently sitting across the room. Your group was always a comfortable second or third place behind them. Outside of your three teams, there were hardly ever any other serious contenders during your favorite bar’s monthly trivia night. Tonight’s theme, as announced on Instagram last week, was simply titled, “English 101,” which meant—
“This is our best chance to win,” you said out loud.
James grinned widely at you as you sat down. “Exactly.”
The third and final member of your group, Amy, was almost fashionably late. There was no such thing as being fashionably late, because Alex, trivia night’s host and aspiring actress, didn’t tolerate latecomers. She was already on stage, the title slide of tonight’s quiz presentation projected behind her as she tested the microphone.
You looked around the room, sizing up the competition. There were generally two camps of participants—students from the nearby CUNY campus and retirees like your rivals. Your group was in an odd in-between place. You were once CUNY students, and not nearly close enough to being retirees. You were going to destroy these kids and not feel bad about it.
Alex had barely started going around the room and collecting team names when a group of four took the empty table next to you. You were pretty sure you hadn’t seen any of them at any other previous trivia nights. The strangest part was that they seemed to be your age instead of college students or senior citizens.
On stage, Alex, of course, called them out right away. “Look, normally I hate tardiness. We are down one group of regulars tonight, so I suppose I can make an exception. Can I get a team name?”
“Home Run,” one of them called. From the angle of your seat, you couldn't see his face too well. You got more of an impression—dark hair, relaxed but not slouched posture, a guitar case on the floor next to him.
After that short interruption, Alex began with her usual enthusiasm. When you prepared for tonight's theme, you crammed your head full of summaries of classic literature and Victorian oeuvres and now you could name every Charles Dickens novel. As if to spit in the face of your preparations, Alex read some sentence about ancient artifacts and museum curators and asked you to fill in the blank with one of four choices.
“What the fuck,” you muttered to yourself as James wrote your answer down.
“It's the first question, Ken,” James said soothingly. “You'll have time to use everything you memorized.”
The next question was a little more typical, but you didn't need to memorize so many Wikipedia articles for it. The three of you put your heads together and guessed that B, the feeling of being safe and protected, was the best definition of the word “chrysalism.”
Halfway through the night, Alex instructed everyone to swap answer sheets with their neighbors and went on to review answers. James traded your paper with one of the girls at Team Home Run’s table. You craned your neck to see that they had almost all the same—likely correct—answers as your team.
“Who are these fuckers?” Amy muttered into her cocktail.
“These fuckers have ears,” said one of the fuckers, leaning his chair back with an easy grin.
Amy's ears turned pink, and the girl who was marking your paper with a sparkly pen that matched her hair clips and her earrings and her bracelets apologized on his behalf.
You kept stealing glances at them for the rest of the night. They weren't cheating—they didn't have the telltale glow of a phone screen under the table like some of the groups of college kids. They just seemed to know everything there was to know about the English language and literature, even as the questions got harder and required the use of the various tidbits you spent the last week memorizing.
“For our final round,” Alex announced dramatically, finally drawing your attention back, “your team will recite a poem from memory.” She clicked to the next slide, which just read, “RECITE A POEM” in all capital letters. “Partial points may be awarded for your effort, based on my personal expert discretion.”
She paused, probably looking at the dismayed expressions around the room. You were definitely part of that group. “So, who wants to go first?”
She was greeted by silence.
“Four score and seven years ago,” James started softly, and then trailed off.
You raised an eyebrow at him. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union?”
Amy rolled her eyes. “You two idiots seem to have forgotten my entire fucking theater career.”
She volunteered to go first, and performed, according to Alex, an accurate recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, of which you knew only the first line—”Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”
Mr. Ferrucci knew all the words to a Maggie Smith poem, which seemed to you like he might be showing off. He probably had dozens of poems memorized.
A couple of the other teams stumbled through more Shakespeare and some Emily Dickinson. You watched and tried to listen to your neighbors argue about who should say their poem. Eventually, one of the guys, not the fucker who called Amy out, won the argument.
You watched as he sat up a little straighter in his chair and began. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”
He had a nice voice, a resonant tenor that commanded the attention of the entire room. Even Alex's gaze wasn't glued to her phone, where she was supposed to be checking the accuracy of the recitations.
It was a short poem, and the spell lasted only a couple of minutes. Alex, to her credit, recovered quickly. “Full points.”
Amy looked pissed and not at all moved.
In the end, the Ferruccis won by one of the narrowest margins in recent memory. Your group placed second, and one question behind you, much too close for comfort, were your neighbors.
Amy stared daggers at them as they left. “I hope they never come here again,” she said, as both you and James rushed to quiet her.
Your third group of the night was the smallest so far. There were four of them, two girls and two guys, and you watched them file into the room through the camera placed right above the entrance. As they shuffled inside, you tried to guess what their relationship to one another was. You had been at this job for about six months so far, and you were still honing your skills. They looked like they were older than you, a relatively fresh-faced college student. The only thing that threw you off was that one of the girls was wearing a Fordham hoodie. Corporate groups were usually larger than this, and groups of friends, especially other college students, usually had at least one visibly tipsy or drunk person by this time of night.
Once they were all inside and the door shut behind them, you started the introductory video. From your camera angle, you couldn't see the screen itself, but it played synchronously on your own computer. Even though you had your headphones on, you muted the audio, because it was tiring to hear it over and over again. You kept an eye on its progress, as it explained the story behind the room—a bank heist in which participants broke into and then out of a vault—and the rules—no photos or videos, no breaking anything, and the one hour time limit. You could hear the audio faintly through the wall.
After it ended, you changed the image on the screen to that of a timer, counting down from an hour, and watched the four of them scatter through the room.
“Wouldn't it be neat if this was real?” one of the guys asked, rifling through the fake money in one of the registers. He was dressed the most formally, like he just stepped out of one of the many corporate skyscrapers that dotted the city. His blazer was unbuttoned and his tie looked loosened, as if attempting to be more casual.
It was a stark comparison with his companion, who joined him in pulling open the other registers. He wore a plain shirt and a pair of jeans that had clearly seen better days.
“Don't tell me you're thinking about actually robbing a bank,” Jeans said.
“Banks don’t keep their money up front anymore,” was Blazer’s response. “That’s why bank robberies aren’t in the news anymore. It’s all white collar crime with computers.”
“Can you count how much it is? There are numbers everywhere, and they have to mean something.” This came from the fourth member of the group. You liked her style the best—a knit sweater over a knee-length polka dotted skirt.
She jabbed a finger at one of the posters decorating the wall of the fake bank, an advertisement for a fake HYSA over a stock image of some diamonds. “8.02% APY? That's not real.”
Fordham Hoodie examined the door in the back of the room, a shiny, silver replica of a stereotypical vault entrance, complete with a massive combination lock that didn’t actually turn. “There’s a keypad here.” Silence, and then she spoke again. “Six digits.”
They seemed like a competent group—and more importantly, a group that wasn't going to break anything. You sat back in your seat and opened your sketchbook. You liked this job because it gave you ample free time to draw. The only thing you had to keep an eye out for was when they got the vault door open, and you had to explain—via another video—the second half of the room. It would take them a little longer to get there.
Almost thirty minutes later, you heard them discover the right clue, judging from the amount of pure exuberance filtering through your headphones. There were six numbers scratched inside a mock safety deposit box that lay out in the open with three different types of locks on it. You looked up to your screen and watched Polka Dots type in the six digits. The lock clicked obnoxiously loudly, to ensure whoever was in your position was paying attention.
You listened to them rib one another—mostly Blazer telling the rest of them that it would have been faster to try every possible combination on the three locks. You had to wait for them to all enter the room. They seemed to be intent on taking their time, and you wanted to tell them they had less than half their time left.
The first thing that happened was that Jeans hit his head on the low ceiling. “Ow. Fuck,” he complained, which led to Blazer reaching one hand up and commenting, “I bet Liv could reach the ceiling too.”
You didn’t wait for them to all try and touch the ceiling, and gave them their next clue instead. The walls, with the exception of the screen on the back wall, where the camera you watched from was mounted, were covered with drawers of varying sizes, meant to mimic even more safety deposit boxes. Some of them opened, and some of them were props. This part was more speed than puzzle solving, and you watched them scramble to find the ones depicted on the screen.
“Are we supposed to take all of this?” you heard Fordham Hoodie wonder out loud. Her hands were full of prop jewels.
“It’s not a real bank heist if we don’t total the place,” Blazer replied cheerfully. It was starting to sound like he had experience. He walked up to the entrance, in front of the timer ticking down from fifteen minutes. “Hey overseer, we’re done.”
They weren’t done. The minutes continued to pass as you watched Jeans turn in a slow circle, clearly trying to figure out what they missed.
“Should we ask for a hint?” Fordham Hoodie asked, and was subsequently ignored.
Jeans and Polka Dots seemed to come to the conclusion at the same time. “We don’t need everything,” he said, just as she pointed out the images in the posters again.
Your finger hovered over the keyboard to pause the timer precisely when they finished sorting through their vault haul. The resultant piles were messy, but correct. You noted their time on a scrap of paper—fifty-one minutes and twelve seconds—and stood from your chair to meet your successful escapees.
IN WHICH … Andrew begins to turn a pipe dream into a reality.
FEATURING … Andrew Han, Olivia Olayemi, Nick Irfan
WORD COUNT … 5k
WARNINGS … Brief mentions of and references to Andrew’s alcoholism.
Andrew waited at the bar until most of the crowd had left the venue. He wasn't the only one. There were a handful of other people, and some of them kept trying to order drinks despite the last call having been nearly half an hour ago during The Year 2000’s last song. Once the pit was empty, he drained the last of his own drink, paid his tab, and made his way to the stage.
“I'm with the band,” he said, displaying the pass he had so carefully wheedled from Liv when he was inevitably stopped.
The backstage was dimly lit, a mess of wires and boxes and paraphernalia from any number of years ago. Andrew hadn't told anyone else he was coming. He could hear the faint sounds of raised voices. He picked his way through the halls, the noise growing steadily louder. He only recognized one of the voices—Sela, the band’s lead singer. The other was probably Austin or Dallas or whatever city his name was, the latest in their string of guitarists.
As much as it pained him—and likely Sela and Liv and Rian—it didn't seem like they would last much longer. It made Andrew feel like less of a homewrecker. Liv could play in two bands at once, he reasoned, until one inevitably fell apart.
He stopped in front of the door where the voices were the loudest, and knocked. They fell silent immediately.
He stepped back, waited a few seconds, and the lock clicked open. Sela stuck her head out, and Andrew watched a host of different expressions cross her face.
“Long time no see,” he said, every prepared thought for this reunion flying out of his head.
Sela seemed to settle for confusion. “Andrew? What are you doing here?”
“Am I not allowed to support my friends?”
She shook her head. “No, I was surprised. How did you get back here?” she asked as she gestured for Andrew to enter their dressing room.
“That would be my fault,” Liv said from the back of the room, and Andrew was immensely relieved to not have to explain himself.
The bleached blond head of the band's drummer, Rian, shot up. “You took him seriously?”
Sela turned on him next. “Was I the only one who wasn't invited to this little reunion?” she asked dryly.
“I don't know who he is,” the guitarist with the city name volunteered.
“Phoenix,” Sela snapped. “Get out. Of the band too, while you're at it.”
Andrew waited until he left, in a string of muttered complaints, before he spoke. “Why don't you leave him playing support?”
Sela seemed to have a lot of anger tonight, as all five foot two of her stepped up to Andrew now, wisps of hair freeing themselves from the hairspray cage of her stage attire. “Why don't you leave and quit telling me how to run my band?”
She stepped back and slumped onto the couch next to Rian. “Liv, can you tell him to leave?”
“No. I invited him here,” Liv said. “Now is as good a time as any to catch up.”
Sela waved a hand dismissively through the air. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Andrew didn’t think she was, but he spoke anyway. “I was thinking of starting a band.”
“A guitar position just opened up, if you want it,” Selma said.
“That's not what I had in mind,” he said. “I'm not good enough for that.”
She rolled her eyes. “You picked the weirdest fucking hill to be humble on. You can play circles around Phoenix. We can stick you behind a keyboard if you'd prefer that.”
This was exactly why the two of them could never coexist professionally. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said.
Then he changed the subject, because he didn’t want to argue with her. She was probably already upset at him for dropping in out of nowhere, and he didn’t want to make it worse. “That Phoenix guy seems like a piece of work.”
Sela threw her hands up in the air. “Oh my God. You tell me.”
It was obvious she had a lot to say. Andrew didn’t do much except nod along and agree with whatever she said. She talked about how he spent four months as their live show guitarist, which was the longest anyone had lasted up until that point, and then a few months as their touring guitarist, and then he started expressing a desire to involve himself in their music, which led to their label pressuring them to formally introduce him as a member of the band.
Occasionally, Liv or Rian would join in with another anecdote about how stupid he was and how all his songs sucked and a begrudging respect for his skills that were drowned out by the sheer unlikeability of his personality.
That somehow turned into gossiping about their old classmates, the only people they had in common with one another besides each other. It was a steady stream of names and faces Andrew could barely remember, until the venue’s staff arrived and asked them to please leave in very bored tones. They didn’t even seem to notice that the four people in the dressing room were not the same four people in the band.
Even though they were beginning to grow a little too old for it, Andrew followed along as Sela led them to her favorite bar—a treat, she said, to celebrate Andrew’s return. He lost track of time, stayed out way too late, and eventually stumbled back into his apartment at an ungodly hour, warmed by either companionship, a little too much to drink, or both.
“Drink?” Andrew asked, taking a can for himself out of his refrigerator. Liv was visiting to discuss their possible joint musical future. Her day job was as a private music teacher, mostly for children, which meant she set her own schedule, worked mostly in the afternoons, and charged obscene amounts of money. His day job was to sit around and think about his future, which meant they had ample time to meet.
Liv twisted over the back of his couch to stare at him. “Andrew, it's the middle of the day.”
He nudged the door closed with his foot. “It's five o’clock somewhere in the world.” He popped the tab open and took a sip.
She sighed and shook her head. “I thought you were over this.”
He shrugged. She should have expected the worst from him. He pulled his singular stool out of his hallway kitchen and sat next to her.
“Are you really willing to leave Sela?” he asked, changing the subject.
Liv fiddled with a curl. “Yeah. Ever since Jackson left, it hasn't been the same. Phoenix was the worst by far. He’s such a snob. Last week he told me he just learned who Taylor Swift is. It's like she finds these guys in the back alleys or dumpsters of hipster art museums or something.”
“Knowing her, she probably did.” Sela was more pretentious than Andrew and Liv combined, especially since Andrew’s pretentiousness had long since been curbed by being a kpop idol.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Andrew nursing his drink.
Liv spoke abruptly. “I found a drummer.” She talked as she swiped through her phone. “Do you remember Nick Irfan? He was a couple years younger than us. He wasn't a music major, but he was in a band and he would always reserve the practice rooms when he wasn't supposed to.”
The name rang no bells in Andrew's mind, but the situation sort of did. There was always some sort of drama over the practice rooms.
“Not really,” he said as Liv handed her phone to him, a video of a poorly lit venue and a band performing some pop punk song playing on the screen.
He clicked the volume up a couple of notches. “Am I going to break up another band?” he asked.
“You're not breaking us up,” Liv said. “It was bound to happen with or without you. You might be expediting it. Nick's band dissolved a couple of months ago. Their lead singer was arrested after his third DUI and that was the end for them.”
Andrew took another sip of his drink. It was a little difficult to tell from the subpar video quality if the drummer was any good or not. There were three of them in the band, and they at least all looked like they were having fun. If Liv knew him and trusted him, Andrew reasoned, he must be good.
“He sounds decent,” he said eventually, handing her phone back.
“He’s better than decent,” Liv said.
“Is he looking for another band? How hard will it be to get him on board?"
She shrugged. “I’d like it to be easy. I pop the question, and he says yes.”
Andrew drained his drink much too soon. "Sure. It didn't take much to convince you, did it?"
“The Year 2000 is falling apart,” she said with a sigh. “We were never meant to last this long. It was something we did for fun, on the side, and then it became this much larger project.”
He hadn’t known much about their band’s formation, because he was already a Fable member by the time they got together. At that time, he had his own set of issues to worry about, and hadn’t given them as much thought as he should have.
“I’m thinking this might be a major project,” Andrew said.
“I don’t mind the scale,” she said, “as long as it’s something we agree on.”
“I don’t have much of a plan,” he admitted. Getting Liv to agree to join him was as far as his current plan extended at the moment.
“You don’t micro-manage on Sela’s level. You know she ambushed one of our label’s executives in an elevator to complain about Phoenix? He didn’t even know who she was. The most good she got was our health insurance and 401(k)s.”
Andrew had never given thought to a retirement plan before. “I’ll ask my agent to add that to the list.” He didn’t have too many demands when looking for another label. He thought of himself as a simple arist—some grace to form his own band, and creative freedom for his music. And money to do those two things. Which was, of course, a high demand.
He wanted another drink, and in order for that to happen, he had to get Liv to leave before she could remark on his habits again. “So what’s our plan for getting Nick on board?”
“Just ask him,” she said. “You’re more of a draw than I am. He works for some consulting company in FiDi, so he doesn’t always text back immediately.”
That was the last thing Andrew expected to hear from her. “You want me to recruit a Wall Street frat bro?” he asked incredulously. He tried to reconcile the image of a professional business man with the pop punk band performance he heard earlier.
An alarm on Liv’s phone rang. “He was in a professional frat,” she said as she stood, silencing the alarm. “Don’t be so judgmental. I have a lesson in an hour, but we’ll talk about this again later.”
She tapped the empty can he still held. “And not to get drunk every time we meet.”
Andrew would tell her he wasn’t drunk, that he was still perfectly in control of all his facilities. He didn’t say that because he didn’t want to start an argument. He saw her to the door instead, and as soon as she was gone, he had another drink.
That same night, Andrew read over his introductory text four or five times before sending it. Then he was confronted with the wall of text inside its bright blue blob. There were few things worse than sending an extremely long text message, and they included both editing the extremely long text message and un-sending it.
True to Liv’s word, a few days passed before Nick replied to him. It was a block of text nearly as long as Andrew's, ranging from how flattering it was to be offered this position to how it was crazy that Andrew remembered him from college—Andrew did not—to his final no. It was punctuated by “lol” no more than four times, and nothing else.
Andrew left him on read. He was going to push him a little more, because Liv vouched for him and his agent was starting to hound him for updates and telling him no label would be willing to sign him if he couldn't get his shit together.
He texted Liv the bad news.
YOU: Nick said no
OLIVIA: Really? Tbh I didn't expect that
YOU: What else do you know about him? He said he remembers me from college so I'm going to ask to meet up as friends
OLIVIA: I feel like he should be the one to tell you his life story but I'll give you what I know. If you end up deciding to crash his workplace, don't mention my name
OLIVIA: I don't want to be part of that
As it turned out, he didn’t need to crash Nick’s workplace. Nick seemed happy enough to meet up, and even proposed the public rooftop plaza of some building in FiDi that also hosted a really good taco stand.
That was how Andrew found himself riding the elevator up twelve floors to the rooftop entrance, possessed by a sense of deja vu. It wasn't exactly the same as Zenith Entertainment's building, given that the latter was a third of the height and the elevator didn't reach the rooftop. The elevator door slid open silently and seamlessly, and he was buffeted by a chilly gust of wind. It wasn't yet cold enough to be winter, but Andrew still tucked his hands into his jacket pockets.
He did a short circuit through the plaza, trying to figure out what type of person liked to frequent this place, and if Nick was of the same type. He wasn't even sure if he could call his current location the rooftop, either. The building extended impossibly higher in a split level that made him dizzy whenever he looked up.
As he made it back to the elevator, he thought he recognized a face he had previously seen on his Instagram feed. He had to follow Nick from his finsta, which made him feel like he was exposing himself because it wasn’t like they knew each other well. His public account had over a million followers, and Andrew wasn’t prepared for that level of commitment yet.
The guy who had to be Nick waved him over. He wore a dark blue blazer and a bright smile.
“Hi. Andrew, right? It's been a while.”
Liv had promised him that he'd know Nick when he saw him, and Andrew hadn't had the heart to tell her otherwise. Her social circle was always bigger than his, and he didn't have the same knack for names and faces and connections and friends of friends that she did.
“Yeah. Too long,” he said out loud, because he could always pretend.
Nick held his phone loosely in one hand, gaze flicking between its screen and Andrew’s face. “You look different on Google Images.”
Andrew wasn't quite sure what to make of that. “They don't always pick the most flattering pictures. Hopefully you prefer the real me.”
“I’ve never had lunch with a real celebrity before. Let’s go with the real you.”
He seemed nice enough, but they were meeting on his lunch break and it limited their time, so Andrew got right to the point.
“Can I ask why you said no to the band?” he asked as they sat down with their—just Nick’s—food. He had barely been able to suppress his full body flinch at the prices. Nick didn’t even blink, and offered to buy something for Andrew. Andrew argued him down until the taco stand’s owner loudly cleared his throat at them, and that was why Nick was the only one eating.
Nick tore into his taco before he spoke. “You’re a professional. Both you and Liv. I’m too old for that now. STSA was never that serious. We started as a Paramore cover band, you know, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that we started to play original music. We never had a label. We’re more indie than Liv.” He cracked a smile at his own joke.
There was only part of that statement Andrew was concerned about. "Liv and I are both older than you," he said mildly, and watched Nick's eyes go almost comically wide with fright.
"No, that's not what I meant. We’re not that old yet. I mean, isn't being a pop star a young person's game?"
"That's why I'm not a pop star anymore," Andrew said. The kpop industry was just, if not more, obsessed with youth than America’s music industry. He had almost been too old ten years ago. “But you’re right. This is a serious venture, and I’d like it if we all took it seriously. It’d be our livelihoods, for Liv and I.”
Nick raked his clean hand through his hair. "Fuck. I messed this up pretty badly, didn't I?"
Andrew shrugged. “I won’t comment on that.”
If this didn’t work out, he thought, he could figure something else out. Maybe he could rip apart Sela’s band even more, if Liv was right and they were about to fall apart anyway. He could see the mental image of his future dissolving in his mind’s eye. He liked being in a group. He hadn’t realized how much he had relied on Jaeseop and Byeonghwi and Intak and even Mingeun until they went their separate ways. His own solo adventures had been a taste of what he didn’t want, even if he was perfectly capable of doing everything alone.
"You know, Liv's been blowing up my phone," Nick said, shaking Andrew out of his thoughts. "Every morning. Every evening. It's like clockwork. She always asks for small things or short conversations, but it’s beginning to feel like psychological warfare. I’m getting the impression that you guys really want me. I don’t know what I did to warrant that.”
That was news to Andrew. “Don’t sell yourself short. We both want to work with people we know and trust.”
“Huh,” was all Nick said as he polished off his taco. “You both drive very hard bargains. Give me a couple of days to think about it again.”
It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. Andrew would take that for now and consider it a small victory.
“Sure,” he said. “We’re also on the lookout for a guitarist. Even if you decide this isn't what you want to do, I’d really appreciate it if you could put us in contact with anyone you know.”
Nick nodded. "Yeah, I can do that. We live in New York City. Guitar players and wannabe rock stars are a dime a dozen here."
Nick said yes two days later, and Andrew felt a weight lift off his shoulders.
“It’s because of you,” he told Liv the next time she visited. He was the only one who lived alone—for now, at least—which meant that he hosted whenever necessary. Nick was supposed to arrive soon too, and Andrew was working on the last-minute touches to make his apartment more presentable.
"Me?" Liv asked, looking surprised.
"He told me you texted him constantly. It might have given him subconscious suggestions.”
She didn’t appear amused. "I just reminded him of all the good times he had with STSA and how he should pursue his passions. I know finance certainly isn't his life goal."
Andrew didn't know that, but he could certainly sympathize.
Nick arrived not long after, with a stream of complaints about clients who lacked respect, decorum, basic human decency, or some combination of the three. He didn’t calm down until he was slipping his shoes off and standing in Andrew’s combined entryway-kitchen-hallway.
“Nice place. I like how it’s almost possible to reach both walls at once,” he said.
Andrew was taller than him, and if he reached out with both arms at once, he could probably touch both walls. He hadn't tried that before and he wasn't going to start now.
"It's New York," he said. At least he had an apartment that wasn't a glorified shoe box. He had windows and a view that wasn't an alleyway. He would be the first to admit that the bar for living spaces was extremely low.
Nick settled next to Liv on Andrew’s couch—which wasn’t really his, as it came with the partially furnished apartment—like he lived there. Andrew pulled his single seat and three soda cans out of the kitchen. If they were going to have another member, he needed more chairs, or someone else had to host.
“We need to promote ourselves better,” Nick said once they were settled. “Obviously. We need a different direction from you two trying to pick some other has-been from whatever they're doing at the moment. No offense.”
“We're all has-beens,” Andrew said, swirling his soda around in its can. Nick didn’t drink, and Liv had declined as well, out of politeness or solidarity or something else he didn’t recognize. He didn’t want to be the only one inebriated, and that was why he had also settled for a Diet Coke.
Nick nodded. “Exactly. That's why we need some fresh blood. Someone who’s young, but still fits our theme.”
“I wasn’t aware we had a theme,” Andrew said. He hadn’t even shown them the music he had written yet.
“I thought it was obvious.” Nick spread his arms wide across Andrew’s couch, nearly backhanding Liv in the face.
She swatted his hand away. “It’s not.”
“Statistically speaking, we represent the demographics with the worst luck when it comes to romance.”
“Speak for yourself,” Liv said indignantly. “You sound like an incel.”
Nick continued on like he hadn’t heard her. “We’re the bottom of the barrel. The last pick in gym class. The subject of ‘I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man on Earth.’ I’d go as far as to say we’re pretty undesirable.”
He was met with silence. As much as Andrew hated to admit it, he could see, somewhat, where Nick was coming from. Liv coughed twice into her hand, still sounding suspiciously like “incel.”
A grin split Nick’s face and he held up his Coke for a toast. “I think I just named us. Can I do that?”
Andrew tapped his soda can against Nick’s. “It’ll work.” It was going to work better than he expected with the lyrics he was writing.
“Fine,” Liv said with a grimace, joining their toast. “Only because I can’t think of anything better right now.”
“I hate to ruin the moment,” Andrew said, “but I wanted to discuss our complete lack of a guitarist.”
“We have you,” Liv pointed out.
He couldn’t picture himself on stage with anything except a microphone and maybe a hanbok if he really couldn’t escape Fable. “That isn’t going to work. I can talk to Sela—”
She cut him off. “No. She’s not going to do you any more favors, and I’m not going to work with any of the guitarists she brought within ten feet of The Year 2000 again.”
Nick cleared his throat. Andrew had almost forgotten he was there. “I feel like I missed something here. I have my own proposal for a guitarist, if I’m not overstepping.”
That was a surprise. He seemed to be working over time already, despite having made his own decision to join not too long ago.
“There’s an intern at my workplace who’s staying for the school year who plays the guitar,” he continued. “We talk about music sometimes, and I don’t think she’s ever been in a band. She listens to Pulp, which I know is important to you.” He gestured to Liv with his can. “And she’s Korean, which is probably important to you.” He turned to point at Andrew.
Andrew and Liv spoke at the same time. “That doesn’t matter to me,” he said, just as Liv said, “I don’t think I can be in a band with a twenty-year-old kid.”
Nick seemed unfazed. “She’s in a grad program and I’ve seen her drink. It can’t hurt to ask.”
Liv pursed her lips. “If you're serious and think she's a good fit, show her this.”
She produced an iPad from somewhere, and Andrew could see something that wouldn't look out of place on a telephone pole or subway wall. He rose from his chair to get a closer look. “You made us an ad?”
It was clearly designed to look older than it was, with its black and white color scheme and halftone design. The words “INDIE BAND SEEKING GUITARIST” were plastered on the top of the page, and a QR code occupied the bottom right corner.
“We didn't have a name until recently, or I would have added that as well,” she said.
"These are the same things you told me," Nick said, drawing Andrew's attention to the pros and cons neatly listed underneath.
"It worked, didn't it?" Liv asked.
Andrew skimmed the lists. The pros included the benefits she wanted, working with other passionate musicians, and travel opportunities. The cons, on the other hand—
"Hey. Why is 'controlling lead singer' on here?"
"That's what you're going to be soon enough," Liv said. "I'm sure once we start playing together your inner tyrant will emerge."
"That's not true," Andrew protested weakly.
“We'll both hate you for it, and I'll probably end every practice by calling you a bastard and cursing your name,” she said cheerily.
Nick looked ill, like he now regretted being helpful. “You didn't tell me he's still like that. I always thought people exaggerated,”
“You'll be fine,” Liv said. “He'll do it because he loves us, and we're good enough to keep up with his pursuit of perfection. I think he's toned it down a bit since college.”
Andrew thought about Intak and Haksu and Eunsu, and how “good enough” by their standards and Taein’s standard had, in fact, been enough.
“Yeah,” he agreed out loud. “You should delete that part.”
Liv considered her design. “No, I like it better this way.”
Andrew handed off Liv’s poster design to Kay, his agent—their agent now, he supposed—and it was an overnight success. It was possibly too successful, because it quickly inundated them with more applicants than they could comfortably consider. Nick’s dime a dozen comment had proven true, and Andrew and Liv culled the list with a ruthless, vibe-based efficiency.
They also met Nick's intern, Eunice Yoon, whose name had Andrew texting Mingeun with one hand while they talked. According to him, that was also his sister’s name and she was going to school in New York, but she didn't play the guitar. Even through the texts, Andrew could hear his derisive tone of voice, like he thought Andrew was stupid.
Andrew didn't think anything more of it. He didn’t have time for that. There were much more important things on his mind, like how they now had a label and everyone seemed to be fine with the tracks he had produced. It was a much smoother path than he expected, and the recording of their first few songs was now under way. The last snag in his plan was that he was recording all the guitar parts, rather than someone who had more confidence and skill than him and the calluses to prove it.
Kay continued to nag him about the fact that their new label wouldn't take them seriously if they kept waiting for the perfect final member to fall out of the sky. Those were her exact words.
“I can play the guitar,” he said the next time they met up with her for lunch.
“You told me you don’t want to do that,” Kay said, tapping notes on her phone with one hand.
“I don’t want to. I don’t like how our options look now, and in that case, I’d rather do it myself.”
“He’s a diva,” Nick said, waving his fork through the air. “It’s his job. We don’t have to listen to him.”
“I thought there was someone you were talking to,” she said.
There had been a few people. Eunice was starting to look like a better choice with each passing day, likely because her connection to Nick made her less forgettable than the other candidates. With them, either Andrew didn't like them or Liv didn't like them, and they were finding it difficult to agree on anything.
“It isn't working out,” Andrew admitted.
“You have to make it work, and soon,” Kay said ominously. “If you insist on having a fourth member and can't produce one by yourselves, the label will choose for you.”
“Absolutely not,” Liv said.
This was something important to her. Andrew knew he could make it work if it came down to it, and Nick seemed to have no strong feelings either way. Sometimes a label knew what they were doing when they shoved a bunch of people together and told them to work it out.
“Then we should take Eunice,” Nick said matter of factly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Andrew knew he was right. He wanted to split the burden with someone, and someone they tangentially knew was better than a complete stranger.
“Alright,” he said resignedly. He knew Liv liked her too, and it was his own reservations that were their biggest hang up.
“Great,” Kay said cheerfully. “Wasn’t that easy? Let her know, and give me her contact information and I’ll get her on your contract as soon as possible.”
It was easy, Andrew had to admit. He had a band, people he could trust, and a record deal. All it took was spending ten years of his life in a kpop group, and even that could have gone worse.
“That sounds great,” he echoed. “I’m looking forward to this.”
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