Visionary

“Four million views in twelve hours,” he states, devoid of his usual smooth cadence, replaced by a weary, gravelly fatigue.

The manager taps a single finger on his tablet, the sound a deadened, repeating tick-tick-tick against the polished surface. Its screen glows, displaying the cursed image: Karina, bathed in late afternoon sun filtering through her apartment window.

Relaxed, off-duty. Smiling faintly. And wearing a red jacket.

Artery red. Soft-looking, almost velvety in the captured light. A simple, oversized piece she’d found in a tiny vintage store in Hongdae, drawn to its color like a magpie to shine. Innocence visualized.

The rest: just her, a sliver of city view blurred in the background, a caption about enjoying a rare quiet moment. Now, it’s a Rorschach blot for a nation’s anxieties.

He swipes, screenshots cascade. Headlines screaming about ‘subversive symbolism,’ forums dissecting the shade of red (“Communist Scarlet?” one asks hysterically), trending hashtags like #KarinaBetrayal and #RedScareIdol.

“The engagement metrics—they’re not just high. They’re pathological. Algorithms birthing hydras.”

Karina shifts on the deep leather sofa, the buttery material suddenly clinging, suffocating. Her own phone, silenced but vibrating incessantly in her blazer pocket, feels like a live grenade ready to explode. She keeps her hands folded tightly in her lap, knuckles pale.

“It was just a jacket,” she says, the words sounding flimsy even to her own ears. “Downtime. Sunlight. That’s all."

She’d worn red. That’s it. Not a flag, not a manifesto. Just cloth against skin on a random Tuesday afternoon.

He sighs, a long, weary exhalation that stirs the stiff petals of the mini-orchid on the desk. "Perception is reality in this industry. You know this. What you see as downtime, the internet sees as a coded broadcast. A declaration."

Leaning forward, elbows on knees, his gaze sharpens despite the exhaustion lining his face. "The indifferent are drowned out. The disappointed are vocal. The angry—they mobilize. They remember. They hold onto things like barnacles."

There’s no need to specify what ‘things.’ The dating scandal with Lee Jae Wook—the carefully managed reveal, the tidal wave of fan vitriol, the weeks of bowed heads and postponed and cancelled schedules—hangs between them, a ghost at the feast. SM had navigated that minefield. Barely.

"This—this feels different. More— political. More volatile. It sticks to the group, not just you. aespa’s brand is futurism and innovation. Not—partisan mudslinging.”

Their comeback looms like a storm cloud on the horizon. Recording finished. Choreography polished to a lethal edge. Concept photos locked. Millions invested. Momentum is a fragile, humming entity, susceptible to the slightest tremor.

Except this isn’t a tremor; it’s a goddamn magnitude 9 earthquake.

“The post is down,” Karina states flatly. She’d complied hours ago, the deletion feeling like an unnecessary bodily amputation. A concession to a madness she couldn’t comprehend. “Damage control is underway. Apologies drafted—"

She trails off. Empty words against a digital wildfire.

Her manager shakes his head. A slow, decisive movement. "Deleting it just fuels the conspiracy theorists. Makes it look like guilt. Like we’re hiding something. Standard apologies sound hollow against this level of—interpretation."

He steeples his fingers. "The timing is catastrophic. We need something stronger. Faster. A— reset.”

Pausing, contemplating the next course of action, the air thickens further. Karina feels a prickle of unease crawl up her spine, colder than the rain-chilled glass behind her. His eyes hold a calculating glint she recognizes from previous crises, now edged with something harder, more desperate.

“There are channels,” he begins, choosing his words with the precision of a bomb defuser. “Networks. Influential individuals who understand how to—recalibrate public perception. Especially when the usual methods seem insufficient."

He doesn’t look at her directly now, his gaze fixed on the distorted cityscape. "Individuals who helped—smooth things over considerably last year. During the Jae Wook situation.”

Karina’s breath catches. The ‘help’ during the dating scandal had been opaque, swift, and terrifyingly effective. Overnight, the most vicious forums went quiet. Key influencers shifted their narratives. It had felt less like PR and more like a silent, surgical strike. She’d been grateful, then. Too relieved to question the scalpel’s origin. Now, the memory curdles.

“You mean the fixers,” replies Karina, her tone low. The term hangs in the air, blunt and ugly. “The ones who trade in favours with people who—own things. People in rooms without windows."

Her grandmother’s stern face flashes in her mind: a woman who recited ancestral prayers every morning, who valued modesty, propriety, and had a clear line between right and wrong. The world he was hinting at was the antithesis of that. It was the whispered-about underbelly, the gilded cages, the transactions disguised as dinners. Escorts. Companions. A different kind of stage, a whole other world of an audience.

He flinches almost imperceptibly at the crudity. "I mean, individuals with significant reach. Who can communicate directly with platforms, with media gatekeepers, even—shape certain bureaucratic priorities. They understand the levers of influence. They can make this,” he gestures dismissively at the tablet displaying the digital maelstrom, “disappear. Like it never happened. Redirect the conversation entirely. In time for the comeback.”

The implication is a tangible weight, pressing down on her delicate chest. Communicate. Shape priorities. Euphemisms as thin as tissue paper. She knows the stories, the rumors that swirled like suffocating fog around other agencies, other names. Young actors suddenly cast in prestige dramas after being seen leaving exclusive clubs with much older, powerful men and high ranking political figures. Idols’ DUI charges vanishing from news cycles overnight. Favors rendered. Debts incurred. The price was rarely monetary.

“I was raised,” Karina insists, the words scraping her throat, “to understand boundaries. To respect myself. My family—” She thinks of her mother’s quiet pride, her father’s protective sternness. “This—side of things. The companionship.” She spits the word flatly. “It’s not something I can entertain. It’s not who I am."

Her conservatism isn’t just about attending church on holidays; it’s a steadfast belief in integrity, in keeping certain parts of oneself sacred, untouched by the grubby commerce of influence. The industry demanded much, but this—this feels like selling her soul wholesale.

Her manager’s expression hardens. The veneer of the concerned figure cracks, revealing the steel beneath. "Karina, please understand the position. This isn’t just about you anymore. This is about Winter, Giselle, Ningning. Their careers. Their futures. The years of training, the sacrifices they made. This comeback isn’t just a song; it’s the lifeline for the group. A prolonged hiatus now, while this festers? It kills our momentum stone dead. The public moves on. Fans find new obsessions, new groups to cling to. You know how fast the tide turns in this industry.”

He leans closer, his voice dropping, intense. “This ‘inner circle’ —their help is swift, decisive. A single meeting. A conversation. That’s all that’s being suggested. An introduction. To a man who understands— image realignment.”

“A conversation,” Karina echoes, the word tasting like pigshit. With a man whose power stemmed from trafficking in human favors. Whose ‘understanding’ of image realignment likely involved trading access to beautiful young people for influence. The thought makes her nauseate. She pictures a faceless figure in a shadowed room, the air thick with cigar smoke and unspoken demands. The red jacket felt trivial compared to the stain this would leave—on her body, on her dignity.

The faces of her members flash before her eyes: Winter’s firm determination, Giselle’s vibrant energy, Ningning’s quiet wit. Their trust. Their shared dreams stacked precariously atop this comeback. And then, the ghost of her own past mistake: the personal lapse that became a public scandal, the burden she’d already forced them to carry. The lingering guilt is a familiar ache, a constant companion.

Lee Jae Wook’s face surfaces. The stolen moments, the genuine affection overshadowed by the eruption of fan entitlement and corporate damage control. SM, with their unseen ‘inner networks,’ had made that go away. Cleanly. Efficiently. Painfully. They’d done it once. They were offering the same brutal solution now. A different price, extracted from a different part of her.

Rebellion is a silent scream breaking from inside her chest. Every fibre of her being, every lesson from her grandmother, every instinct screams ‘no.’ To walk into that enticing lure, even for a ‘conversation,’ feels like stepping onto a path with no return. It’s the industry’s rot, the part she’d vowed to never touch.

But the thought of Winter, Giselle, and Ningning—they ground her. The memory of their shared exhaustion after a 20-hour practice, their whispered hopes for the new song, the weight of their collective ambition. And the crushing weight of knowing she caused this. Her jacket. Her downtime. Her innocent post that became a political football. The rock is her conscience, her values, the person she was raised to be. The hard place is the potential ruin of not just her career, but the dreams of three others who trusted her.

The manager watches her, his gaze unreadable. He sees the conflict raging behind her carefully composed mask, the slight tremble in her clasped hands. He doesn’t push; doesn’t need to. Pressure is a physical thing.

Karina closes her eyes. Just for a second. She sees the red jacket, beautiful and soft, now a symbol of everything gone wrong, now bathed in her own blood. She sees the relentless scroll of online hate. The comeback posters defaced digitally, the music ignored because of the noise surrounding the messenger. She sees disappointment, not anger, in her members’ eyes if it all crumbles because she refused the only lifeline offered.

The words that leave her lips are thin and brittle, carried away by the hum of the air conditioning almost before they’re spoken. They taste like defeat. Like a slow poison.

“Fine.” She opens her eyes, meeting her manager’s gaze. There’s no relief in his expression, only grim acceptance. “Set up the meeting.”

Karina looks out at the distorted neon lights of Gangnam, the city that built her dreams and now demanded her sacrifice. The red jacket was gone from her feed, but the stain, she knew, was just beginning to spread, in a way no digital deletion could ever erase. She had agreed to meet the rot. For the sake of the light. The price remained terrifyingly unknown. Her phone vibrates again in her pocket, a relentless reminder of the world waiting outside, already judging. She doesn’t reach for it.

The jacket had been beautiful. That was all. That was everything. And now it was gone.

—————

The phone’s shrill bleat is a shiv to the temple. It claws through the syrupy haze of near-sleep, the warm, dark cocoon where limbs are tangled and breaths syncopate.

Giselle’s leg, smooth and heavy, is thrown possessively over your hip, her face buried in the crook of your neck, exhaling tiny, warm puffs against your skin that smell faintly of expensive bourbon and her shampoo—something clean and green, like crushed stems. The sheets are a battlefield of silk, kicked low around your waist. Her hand rests, limp and trusting, on your bare chest, right over the steady thump beneath.

Peace. A rare, stolen thing.

The noise shatters it. Again. Insistent. Metronomic.

You groan, a low rumble in your chest that vibrates against Giselle’s forehead. She stirs, mumbling something unintelligible, slurred with sleep, burrowing deeper. Her fingers twitch against your sternum; reaching for the nightstand feels like moving through wet cement. Your arm is leaden, trapped partly under the delicious weight of her. You fumble, blind, knocking over a half-empty glass of water—the clink sharp in the quiet—before your fingers finally close around the cold, sleek rectangle of the burner phone.

Luminary-issued. Always on. Always priority.