EPILOGUE: The Way I Am

3 MONTHS LATER

Three months is basically a lifetime in idol years. Whole comebacks happen in three months. People debut, blow up, get a scandal, apologize on camera, and come back wholesome.

So a lot can change. And a lot had.

To see it, you'd have to cross the sea to Osaka. From high enough up, the whole city is just a lit-up grid somebody spilled juice on, all that wet neon bleeding into the canal and the canal bleeding it right back. Osaka was doing what Osaka does, glowing like it was getting paid for every bulb.

And if you came down out of that, past the rooftop bars and the office windows nobody's turned off and the trains stitching the dark together, you'd hit a magical place called Dotonbori. The crowd down there thickens into one big slow animal that breathes takoyaki smoke and barely shuffles forward.

Down another floor into the noise, past the guy selling crab on a stick the size of a forearm, past the screens stacked high running soda commercials and idol faces. Past that Glico man frozen mid-victory-lap over the water like he'd been sprinting since 1935 and nobody had the heart to tell him to stop. Down into the wet electric crush of the street, where izakaya touts shout over the mechanical rattle of gachapon machines.

Cameras everywhere, phones up everywhere, a whole city built just to look at things and be looked at, neon designed to grab you by the eyeballs and not let go.

If you pushed right through the middle of it, slipping past the dizzying strobe of pachinko parlors and the curtained doorways of purikura booths, you'd hit the automatic doors of a Namba arcade. A place designed to assault every earthly sense on purpose. Track inward through the noise, past the rhythm-game players sweating over neon buttons - all the way to the back wall, into the sad blue glow of a UFO catcher.

You'd see an eighth wonder of the world, hiding in plain sight.

Hair dyed cherry red and spilling over bare shoulders. A tiny strapless black corset held shut by nothing but delusion and a criss-cross of laces down an open back, the cords spanning a gap of bare skin from her shoulder blades to the small of her spine, no bra anywhere in sight. It pushed what little she had up into a respectable line of cleavage, and a pair of detached black sleeves bunched at her wrists were the only concession to the fact that it was November in Osaka, since the rest of her was bare from collarbone to the denim sitting illegally low on her hips. You'd see a twenty-one-year-old dressed like an absolute slut, losing her mind over a plush bunny wedged against the glass.

Three months ago she'd been performing goddess on a Jeju pool deck, letting an off-limits man completely wreck her from the inside out, then sobbing into a duvet by next night's end because getting her pussy repeatedly filled to the brim hadn't managed to fill whatever hole she actually needed filled.

Tonight, she was just a girl who wanted the bunny.

"You're gonna break the glass," the boy next to her observed.

Her legs were planted wide, denim riding low enough to expose the twin dimples at the base of her spine, where the corset's laces criss-crossed down to a bow she'd never have been able to tie herself. With her forehead pressed to the glass, her back sloped into a deep curve, thrusting her hips back in a deep doggy-style arch that men enthusiastically paid soapland money for in Tobita Shinchi, a couple districts away, except she was doing it for free, at a claw machine, for a bunny. The boned corset gripped her waist so tightly it made the flare of her ass look even more absurdly round, though up top it sat a little loose on her skinny frame, the cups gaping forward every time she leaned in over the machine.

"I'm literally asking it nicely! It's SO different."

"I don't think it can hear you," he said, and then, quieter, mostly to himself, "though honestly I get why it'd want to help." He went a little red the second it was out, like he hadn't meant to say it where she could hear.

"It TOTALLY does." She pressed her forehead harder against the glass, her huge eyes locked on a pink bunny wedged between a knock-off Pikachu and a deformed cat. "Come on baby, come to mama."

He hovered by the next machine, hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels. In a fuzzy white fleece over a white tee and black leather pants, he looked ridiculously soft, like a very expensive, very huggable sheep, and he'd been wearing that same shy, helpless grin since she'd dragged him in twenty minutes ago, like he couldn't believe his night was going like this and didn't want it to stop. "You've, um. You've spent like three thousand yen on this."

"That's literally an investment!" She fed another coin into the slot. "Like I'm SO close, I just need -"

"You said that four tries ago." He smiled at his shoes when he said it.

"Okay but this time I actually mean it!"

The claw descended - then grabbed at air. She let out a dramatic whine and smacked both hands flat against the glass, and across the aisle two girls at the photo booth leaned into each other, glanced over, and then looked very hard at their own photo strip instead.

"Maybe, um." He pushed off the machine, hesitating before deciding to put himself in the line of fire. "Maybe let me try?"

"No - wait, I totally have this -"

"Sunbaenim." He bumped his shoulder gently against hers, not quite meeting her eyes, and slid his own coins into the slot. "Just one go. If I lose you can leave me in Japan."

"Oh my gosh, STOP." She smacked his arm. "We've been over this. You can't call me sunbaenim while I'm losing my mind at a claw machine, it's so weird, I will actually -"

"Sorry. Sorry." He fought a grin. "Yuna-sunbae -"

"Woomin."

"...noona," he tried, going pink.

That one she let stand, mostly because of what it did to her stomach and her pussy, which was so rude of him. "Fine. Better." She stepped back, crossing her arms under her tits, squeezing them together and making the corset do heroic work. "But if you drop him, I'm literally leaving you in Japan."

She leaned over the machine to glare at the claw and caught his eyes drop, right down into the gap where the corset hung off her skinny ribs and showed him everything - her small tits swinging free, pale pink nipples already tight from the air conditioning. Then his gaze snapped back to her face, color crawling up his neck. This had been happening all night, every time she bent for a coin: he got the whole show and yanked his eyes away every time, like looking would be rude, like she was a person and not a thing to look at.

It was driving her insane. She found herself getting wet under the denim, which was literally insane because they were in a fucking arcade.

Three months ago she'd have taken that as a challenge and made it her life's mission to crack him. Would've leaned in close enough to make it a problem, found an excuse to touch his arm, made her eyes do that thing they did when she wanted someone to stop thinking clearly.

Tonight she just watched him line up the claw with a tiny, serious furrow between his eyebrows, utterly focused on winning her a cheap toy, and felt a fizzy flutter right between her legs.

This was the third time they'd hung out since an acting workshop back in September - JYPapi's idea, wrapped in three polite lies: "just for confidence," "just to broaden your range," "no pressure." There was maybe, possibly, allegedly an office-comedy role coming. Nobody said Park Shin-hye's name out loud, which meant everyone was thinking it. Woomin had been the guy who made her break character during the crying-on-cue exercise by whispering a joke right before her turn.

He'd had an audition in Tokyo yesterday, she'd had three days off, and Osaka was the middle point. She'd texted him "im in japan do u wanna hang??? or is that weird" and he'd replied "im in" within thirty seconds. She'd picked Osaka because she figured she'd be less recognizable here than in Seoul, which was delusional considering ITZY's Japan numbers, but she'd already decided, without consulting facts, that she was right. He'd happily gone along with it, which was either very sweet or very stupid.

Probably both, but, like, who cares?

The claw dropped, grabbed the bunny's ear, and lifted.

"Wait - WAIT -" Yuna's hands flew to her mouth.

The bunny swung, held, teetered, and finally dropped into the chute.

She shrieked loud enough to startle a knot of teenage boys two machines over, who'd been mangling a Taiko song for the last five minutes mostly as an excuse to keep half an eye on the redhead bent over the claw machine in the corset and the criminally low jeans, losing the beat every time she arched for a coin. One of them had gone still a while back, leaned into his friend's ear, mouthed something, and then very pointedly gone back to his drums. She was too busy lunging for the prize door and yanking the bunny out and clutching it to her chest like Woomin had handed her a Music Bank trophy instead of a ¥300 stuffed animal made of toxic fluff.

"NO WAY YOU DID IT!" She spun on him, eyes huge. "You literally just - how did you - WAIT!"

"Beginner's luck." He smiled, that shy, unguarded expression pushing the corners of his eyes up into tiny crescents.

She bounced on her toes, squishing the bunny against her corset, on the verge of exploding with ridiculous joy.

And he was looking at her like that was the best thing he'd seen all week.

"He's literally perfect," she gasped, holding the bunny up to examine it. "I'm naming him Osaka."

"Isn't that, um." He scratched the back of his neck. "A little basic?"

"Osaka-chan."

He ducked his head, laughing. "Still basic."

"You're just jealous because Osaka-chan is already literally obsessed with me." She hugged it tighter, grinning at him over the bunny's pink head. "You're literally the best! Like seriously, I was gonna be here all night."