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lgihtspeed · 7 months ago

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TRANSMISSION ⌗OO1 : PROLOGUE.

IN WHICH Lightspeed has to succeed. FEATURING Lightspeed ensemble, Choi Hayoung, Logan Miura WORD COUNT 6.7k NOTES Takes place from the end of their survival show to the day before their debut. I was supposed to finish it before their debut but whatever.

When he stands on IGNITE!’s final podium, surrounded by the people who will be his future group members, TYLER knows they have to succeed. They have no choice but to succeed. He knows C Entertainment’s track record. They—Lightspeed—are set not only to be the company’s third artist, but their third round of survival show survivors. Obviously, it’s a pattern. C Entertainment’s other pattern is dropping artists and actors who aren’t successful. It’s evident in the quick turnover of their talent: actors and actresses who are pushed as the next big thing through one or two dramas before they disappear off the face of the planet, and in their failed management of TFTS, a duo of former Girls Planet 999 contestants, who released the greatest single of 2023 only to disband in five months.

He pulls himself out of his thoughts and grips Ash’s hand tighter, because who would have thought that the two of them would make it this far, together? They’re no Haobin, he knows, but meeting one of his college acquaintances on a kpop survival show was something Tyler never would have put on a bingo card, ever. If he was told six months ago that he and Ash would go as far as to choose each other at every single opportunity, and then win the whole show, he would have laughed and bet against himself. Six months ago, they were nothing more than acquaintances. Tyler would have dapped him up and moved on with his life.

“How much longer do you think we have to stand here?” Ash asks through gritted, smiling teeth.

Tyler gives him an almost imperceptible shrug. He hasn't seen a cue from the production team in a few minutes. He wonders if it's possible they've forgotten.

He watches Mia, the winner of the girls’ half of the show, jump lightly down from the podium, tuck her hair behind her ear, and bend down at the edge of the stage to high-five the closest viewers.

As IGNITE!’s other first place winner, Tyler wonders if he should follow her. He stays rooted in place. Maybe they can spin that somehow: Mia is the personable idol you can meet and Tyler is the cold, aloof, senior you're too scared to talk to.

His mind wanders. Other than Ash, he doesn't know too much about his fellow winners. The third guy is Ev. Tyler doesn't know much about him except for the fact that he's British. He has the type of soft accent that rounds his words just the right amount to be extremely attractive to teenage girls on Twitter. Tyler knows this because he's seen the tweets. The two of them have performed together only once. EV didn't make too much of an impression. A decent enough singer, and not much else. Certainly not a stand-out performer the way Tyler is. Or the way Ash is. They auditioned for the same position—dance, and then played up their pseudo-rivalry as classmates and now competitors.

The lights return to full brightness. Tyler starts slightly, squinting against the sudden light. Mia jumps nimbly back on the stage, waving at the audience again and eliciting another round of cheers. Tyler isn’t built like that. He’d rather die.

Ash knocks his shoulder against Tyler’s. “Earth to Tyler. Dude, you’re out of it.”

Tyler jostles him back. “Is that so weird? Center is a big responsibility.”

Ash windmills his arms playfully, acting like he's going to trip and fall. “Don't act like you're surprised.”

He has a point there. Tyler isn’t surprised. From the show’s very beginning, he’s always ranked highly. It might be presumptuous to say, but he’s always known he was going to win. It was only a matter of his specific rank. First place is, of course, extremely gratifying. It’s a testament to how far he’s come from the American Midwest.

One of the production assistants signals their turn to head off stage. The six losers of the finale are already gone, spirited backstage at some point when Tyler wasn’t looking. They head off in pairs in reverse rank order, leaving Tyler and Mia as the last two standing.

“Congratulations,” she whispers to him, and then links her arm in his as they walk out into the wings. The cheer that erupts behind them is the loudest one he’s heard all night.

“Same to you,” he says, stomach turning somersaults. He blames it on the adrenaline and not the scent of strawberry shampoo emanating faintly from Mia’s pink hair.

In the dressing room backstage, Ash is already dressed in his usual sweatshirt and sweatpants combo. He throws Tyler’s normal clothes at him. “Get dressed. We’re going out. Ev’s in the bathroom and I can close my eyes.”

“We?” Tyler asks, picking apart his uniform’s red and white tie. He doesn’t understand the fascination with the school uniforms. Something about his appearance made the stylists force him into a tie every single time. Ash got the delinquent treatment: rumpled blazer, top two shirt buttons open, deliberately messy hair. Tyler spent the past four months envying him.

Ash twirls his pointer finger through the air. “All of us. The winners.”

That sounds like a recipe for disaster, or maybe their very first scandal. Fuck it. Tyler doesn’t care. He’s caused enough of a scandal on his own, being himself. What’s one more? Their new agency has the money to make any sort of problems evaporate the instant they appear. The proof is in Sejun’s still-flourishing career. He’ll never forgive them for their treatment of TFTS.

“Where are we going?” he asks, pulling his t-shirt on. There’s a very large, very obvious circular wrinkle in the middle where Ash balled it up. Tyler tries to smooth it out.

“Wherever the night takes us,” Ash says cheesily.

Tyler nearly cracks a smile at his delivery. He can’t encourage Ash that much, so he busies himself with lacing up his Converse instead. Lightspeed will succeed, and Tyler’s going to have fun while it happens.

The first thing CONSTANCE does is call home. IGNITE!’s live finale lasted longer than any of them or the production team had anticipated, and by the time she’s reunited with her phone, it’s almost one in the morning. She manages to finally pick up one of her mother’s calls. She puts her family on speaker and scrolls through her notifications.

“Con! You won! We always knew you could do it!” Her mother’s voice crackles through the speakers, enthusiasm infectious.

Constance grins, despite knowing they can’t see her. The rush from IGNITE!’s finale—from winning IGNITE!’s finale—returns, leaving her giddy. “It was so much fun.” She flops down on her bed, hair still stiff with all the hairspray and mousse and creams the stylists used to coax it into shape. She runs a hand through it and it comes out sticky. She wipes her hand on her shirt.

From a little farther away over the phone, she hears her mom say, “Ken! Hurry up and congratulate your sister.”

“I already texted her,” Ken complains from just as far away.

In between typing out thank you messages and crying emojis to her friends, she sees her brother’s text. It’s a screenshot of an ending screen from one of the Super Smash Bros games, Jigglypuff on the beach with the word “Congratulations!” spelled out—exclamation point and everything—underneath.

“That doesn’t count,” she complains back. “It’s not even your screenshot. You found that online.”

Ken comes so close to the phone speaker she can hear him breathe. “Congrats or whatever. When are you gonna pay me back for covering all of Dad’s birthday dinner?”

“That was last year!”

“You still owe me seventy dollars. Plus interest.”

“Remind me to never again borrow money from the Kenneth Im Bank.”

“Don’t want to.” Her brother’s immaturity is sometimes so shocking that Constance forgets he’s three years older than her.

Her dad is up next, from presumably all the way across their house. “Good job,” he says, or at least that's what Constance thinks he’s saying.

“Dad, you have to be closer to the phone,” she says patiently, raising her phone’s volume.

“He says good job,” Ken yells, and Constance winces, lowering her volume again. “He also says you should pay me back because you’ll make more money than me.”

It’s a good thing her roommate, Mia, isn’t here. Constance doubts this conversation could be any quieter. “I don’t know if that’s true.” Ken is a data scientist. She remembers when he got his first job offer, straight out of grad school, bragging about base pay and a signing bonus and stocks and unlimited PTO.

“He didn’t say that,” her mother says. “We’re all so proud of you.”

Constance can hear the smile in her voice. Ken sends her another text and almost ruins her night—a rather unflattering, extremely low quality picture of her, clearly a screenshot taken from IGNITE!’s recently concluded finale. She types back a quick wtf before going back to the spoken conversation.

“I wish you were here.” The production company had only been willing to cover the travel costs and tickets for two guests per contestant, and given that there were three members of her immediate family, none of them wanted to be the one left behind. Constance had invited two long-time friends instead, both of whom are probably enjoying the five-star hotel they’re staying in. Privately, she thinks that if the production team had opted for a slightly cheaper hotel, they could have footed another plane ticket instead. Beyond that, Constance hadn’t thought she would win. She’d placed in the top three only once before, and after the announcement that the winning group would be coed, she didn’t think she could do that again. Somehow, she did it anyway.

“Don’t worry about us.” Her mother’s voice is still bright. “We hosted our own watch party.”

“Mom invited Rosenbaum,” Ken interrupts.

“My homeroom teacher? Mom, that’s weird,” Constance complains, even though she knows perfectly well that her mom and her senior year homeroom teacher are coworkers and good friends. It’s still weird. In high school, she spent more time in the robotics lab than in class, and she never stepped foot in the choir room.

“She’s proud of you too,” her mom says, completely glossing over Constance’s response.

Her throat tightens. She’s done a good job, she thinks, of not crying so far. She’s glad no one is in the room with her now. It’s not like idols don’t cry, but idols don’t cry as messily as Constance does. She’s extremely thankful Mia chose to go out with the rest of the group, and no one tried too hard to convince her to go along. Parties and clubs and bars were never Constance’s scene, and though it’s unlikely they’ll be punished for sneaking out after their win, she doesn’t want to risk it.

“Bran was there too,” Ken says, shaking Constance back to life. Her tears dry up immediately, replaced with the hammering of her heart and her sweating palms. She dries her hand on her shirt.

“Oh. Okay,” she says, trying to get her heart to stop racing and her palms to stop sweating. She’s pretty sure Ken doesn’t definitively know she had a crush on his best friend when they were younger. But then again, twelve-year-old Constance wasn’t exactly discrete. Twenty-three year old Constance should not have this reaction at the mere mention of her crush from half her lifetime ago. Now she has to live with the mortifying realization that Ken definitely showed him that unflattering picture of her.

She yawns, the adrenaline of the night finally wearing off. Somehow, that’s audible over the phone speakers.

“What time is it?” Her mother sounds alarmed. “Do you need to go to sleep? Have you been eating enough? What did you have for dinner?”

Constance dismisses her concerns. “I’m fine, Mom. I’ll call you back in the morning. Good night.” If she isn’t decisive, they’ll talk forever.

Her mother sounds slightly disappointed as she says, “Good night. I love you, Con.”

Her throat constricts again, and she barely manages to croak out, “Love you too, Mom” before she ends the call.

There are so many people supporting her—her family, her friends, everyone she knew back home. She can’t let them down. Lightspeed has to succeed. Constance doesn’t know what she’ll do otherwise.

MIA sits cross-legged on the floor of her brand new, half-furnished, extremely temporary, C Entertainment-subsidized studio apartment. She's already lived through IGNITE!’s finale once, but it's been ingrained in her to carefully pore over and analyze each of her public appearances. It’s why she’s seen every episode of Excellence (2017-2019), where she played a friend of main character Danielle “Elle” Walker, at least once. It’s also why she’s seen every episode of its spinoff, Lin & Kris (2019-2020), where she had her biggest starring role to date, multiple times over. Watching it all, over and over and over again, sometimes makes her feel less like Mia Kim and more like her fictional character, Linda Lee—a know-it-all, goody two-shoes overly concerned with grades and the rules.

IGNITE!, at least, let Mia be herself. The hard part is that after spending so many years acting, both for her job and to please her mother, she doesn’t quite know what parts are her, as her own individual person.

She reaches for the TV remote and presses play. The show was easily broadcast and archived on YouTube, which gives her no excuse to not watch it. During IGNITE!, the contestants had come together to watch and react to it. Mia had pointed out her own shortcomings with a speed and alacrity that she realized early on was not normal. After that, she kept it to herself instead, repeating over and over again in her head what she should have done better. She should have smiled more. She should haven’t said that offhand comment. She shouldn’t have laughed so much at that performance. She should have had a bigger reaction.

Now she sits on the hardwood floor with a notebook, the sixth of its kind, while the episode plays on the TV. She could skip through it, looking specifically for her parts. It’s over an hour long, and it’ll take her much longer than an hour to watch it. But she wants to see the people who she’s going to be in a group with. To be honest, Mia doesn’t know anyone else that well. She was in it to win it, not to make friends. She formed a few superficial relationships, the ones she knew would work well on TV. For that reason, she sort of knows Constance—smart, unassuming, funny when she wants to be, in a league of her own when it comes to singing. They’ve been roommates since the show’s halfway point, but Mia was always too conscious of all the cameras to speak more than she had to. That alone, she knew, could have made her look cold and unconcerned, too focused on the destination to enjoy the journey. So she made up for that in her actions—always slinging an arm around Constance’s shoulders, holding the other girl’s hand, picking her first for the final sports event currently playing on the TV.

Mia remembers doing her best to pick her team members in an even way—a balance between other people who were ranked highly, and then a few lower ranks. She can’t pick only from the top six. She’d be called a bitch and accused of favoritism. And yet somehow her team consisted of four Lightspeed members: herself, Constance, Ash, and Ev. She draws her knees up into her chest and suppresses the urge to scroll down into the comment section.

She watches herself explain her choices: Constance for her logical strategies, Ash for his infectious enthusiasm, Ev for his quick thinking. This was one of the first events they had all done together, Mia remembers. She hadn’t known the guys too well, but she knew she couldn’t pick a team of four girls either. She makes a note to find out what else Ev is good at, now that they’re going to be group members. Her performance has been fine so far. Maybe it’s because she’s spent the past four months in Korea with little access to her cell phone, and so her mom has no way of contacting her to provide her own feedback.

On screen, the sports progress. Mia's team did well, winning two of the five events and being crowned the overall winners. She watches her team accept the prize, a trial skincare kit from one of the show's sponsors. Her remarks are more pointless and shallow than they usually are, so she writes that down—Depth of winning comments. Need to show more sincerity. The four of them worked well together. She's optimistic for Lightspeed.

The episode drags on. It hadn't seemed that long during filming. The two songs for the finale are revealed again, like the producers forgot they showed them in the previous episode. Mia leans forward to watch herself pick first. She's standing in the middle of the room, two diverging paths labeled with the song title, microphone clutched in both hands.

The Mia sitting on the hardwood floor scratches another bullet point into the journal. Appear less desperate. No need to clutch anything.

Then the episode cuts to Tyler before she picks a song. She relaxes fractionally. It makes sense. The producers would want to draw out the suspense of her choice.

There usually isn't much to pay attention to when she isn't on screen. This time is a little different. She watches Constance stress about which of the two songs she should choose and Ash pretend to walk one way before he turns around and picks the other song.

She smiles and almost laughs when she hears him say, “It's like that meme, you know. The illusion of free choice. I'm the cow heading for the slaughterhouse.” There's a slight pause, and then he adds, “I hope I won't end up slaughtered.”

Lightspeed will have to succeed, she decides. Mia wants to spend as long as possible here, making her own choices and living her own life. At some point she'll have to retreat back into her mother's tutelage. Until then, she plans to savor every moment of her freedom.

She pauses the video. She's not quite halfway through and she's taken only a few notes. Fewer than any of the other episodes. Cautiously, she clicks her pen and closes the notebook. What's the harm in stopping here? Her mom won't have to know. Mia will report her honest thoughts so far, and then fudge a couple of lines. She's never done that before, and the mere thought of it is quietly thrilling. After her debut, she expects to be so busy she won't have time for this. It's a strange ritual anyway, now that she's seen her peers’ reactions to it.

Mia picks up her phone and sends a message to the other Lightspeed members—anyone up for dinner? i’ll pay.

Ev’s thumbs up emoji response is instantaneous—just the person she wanted to talk to. She leaves her notebook on the floor. It'll always be there. She might not be able to rid herself of her mother’s influence completely, but if she’s going to take advantage of her freedom, she has to start somewhere.

The day Lightspeed learns of their debut date, VIOLET buys a 2024 and 2025 wall calendar. She stands in the kitchen and shreds them to pieces, ripping the decorative pictures off each one until all that's left are the days themselves. Ev wanders into the kitchen in the midst of her work. They make silent eye contact. She watches him steal one of Mia’s Babybel cheeses out of the fridge.

“What’s this?” Ev asks, nodding at her work. He peels the plastic off the cheese with much more care than Violet and her calendar.

“Nothing,” Violet says. She doesn’t want to talk to him about it. She knows Ev is nice, and that he means well, but she also knows he’s going to try and talk her out of it. A year from now, Lightspeed will go their separate ways. She would do well to not forget that. The calendar is a physical reminder.

Ev wouldn’t understand that. Violet chalks it up to his age: too young to truly understand that nothing good can last forever.

“Have it your way,” he says with a shrug, dropping the wax wrapping into the trash.

The landscape pictures of Violet’s calendars follow soon after.

In the privacy of her bedroom, she tapes them to the wall in order, like some sort of interpretive wallpaper. She has to admit that it makes the room look a bit like a prison cell, and she’s counting down the days to her escape. Deep down, she thinks Lightspeed isn’t far off from that. IGNITE! was her last chance for a debut, and now Lightspeed will be her last group. Violet doesn’t see a future for herself as an idol after this. She was too old five years ago. She’s practically a dinosaur now. Her peers are fourteen years old. She feels ill just thinking about it.

A knock sounds at her door. Her first reaction is that someone wants her to turn her music down, though she's very conscious of thin walls. She turns it off before she answers the door.

Tyler stands there in the doorway, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He could be anywhere else.

“Do you need something?” Violet asks, perhaps a little ruder than she should be.

“Your music is loud,” he says. Tyler is skittish around her, and Violet doesn't know why. She can't tell if he's the type of guy to be completely inept at talking to women. He seems fine whenever he interacts with Mia and Constance. Outside of his inflammatory Twitter account, she thinks he’s normal.

“My bad,” Violet responds, before quickly adding, “You can hear it?”

Tyler nods. “We share a wall.” He jerks his thumb over his right shoulder. “SES’s ‘Soul to Soul?’”

“Yeah,” she says, a little surprised. “I thought the song was older than you.”

He scoffs. “It isn’t. It’s a good song. You’re not that much older than me.”

She isn’t. That makes the two of them, then, kpop dinosaurs. Ash should probably be included in that, given that he’s between their ages.

Tyler peers past her into her room. She makes a move to stop him, but she’s seconds too late.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing past her.

Violet knows exactly what he’s looking at: her newest wall decor. “Nothing,” she says, about something that is much more than nothing, leaning against the doorframe to keep him from seeing too much.

He drops his arm and stares over her other shoulder. “Are you, like, obsessed with schedules? Is it that important to you? There are people who will keep track of that for us.” His words are what she’d categorize as carefully neutral. She doesn’t doubt his ability to act—he survived IGNITE! after all.

“It’s nothing,” she repeats, and Tyler drops it, approaching with another topic instead.

“You were in Heart Lines, right?” he says with the confidence and casuality of someone who already knows the answer to their own question.

“I was.” That was eight years ago. It was her first group, and the one that lasted the longest, until Lightspeed. When the group was still around, she thought it might last forever. In hindsight, she was ridiculously naive.

“You had some good songs.”

“Is this a joke? Name one.” They didn’t have any good songs. They had ten songs total, and Violet was barely part of it. She had few lines and even less screen time in their two music videos.

“‘Heart Beat,’” Tyler says, sounding surprised as he names her first debut song. “It was on my Spotify Wrapped in 2016.”

Violet stares at him. “You have horrible taste in music.”

“Wow. Okay. Are you going to say that about Lightspeed?”

She shrugs. “Probably not.” It’s a well-known fact that C Entertainment has a lot of money. Surely their music will be good. And even if it isn’t, she won’t have anything bad to say. Ever since her online kpop journalist career kind of took off, she’s concentrated on being more positive, trying to focus only on the good and the constructive. Sometimes it’s hard.

“If Ash gets his way, it could be worse,” Tyler says grimly. “He's trying to be the next online hyperpop sensation, and his favorite group is NCT.”

That doesn’t bother Violet too much. As long as they can stand out, without sounding like ninety percent of the other groups, she doesn’t care too much. Heart Lines was just another girl group from a small company with a cute, schoolgirl concept. Tyler might not know this, but Lightspeed has to succeed. It’s her last chance to be an idol, and Violet doesn’t want it to end the same way her previous groups ended—nothing more than the briefest flash in the pan. She’d rather go out like a star—the light visible for years and years into the future.

“That’s a problem?”

“Right. I’m the one with poor taste,” he deadpans. He seems to have warmed up to her.

“If you say so.” Violet has to get back to her wall. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches one corner of February 2025 slip down, then another.

“What was that?” Tyler asks, as if he can hear the very whisper of paper against the wall. Maybe he can. Maybe she's the problem, overreacting to everything he's trying to be a good neighbor about.

She takes a step back into the room, letting the door shut about halfway before she stops it. “I'm taking care of it. See you around.”

She lets the door shut in Tyler's face, again, probably ruder than she should be. He might think she's a bitch, but that doesn't bother her. She's here to succeed for herself. She rips another piece of masking tape and affixes February 2025 back to its place on her wall.

Being called in to talk to your boss on the first day of your new job is like being called into the principal's office as a kid, but ten times worse. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happening to ASH. The office of C Entertainment COO Choi Hayoung reminds him of a doctor's office. Or maybe a dentist's office. It even smells like antiseptic. A few pun-filled posters reminding patients to floss and exercise wouldn't look out of place.

The couch he sits on is, at least, much more comfortable than it looks. Ash sinks into it, spread out over all three seats.

“Congratulations on your victory and your upcoming debut,” Hayoung says with an almost motherly smile. Her English has no accent he can discern. Two framed diplomas, sit on the wall behind her desk, not unlike a doctor’s office. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from ASU of all places, and a master’s in international relations from Harvard. It surprises him, because Hayoung has much more of a West Coast California vibe. The Bay Area, specifically, if he was asked at gunpoint.

Ash decides this is better than the principal’s office.

“Thanks,” he answers, somehow sinking further into the couch.

Hayoung checks the time, her watch quite literally glittering in the light. He suspects it costs just as much as his college education.

“I don't have long,” she starts, “but I wanted to let you know that you've been chosen to be Lightspeed’s leader.”

Ash straightens up the best he can. “Me?” he asks, pointing at himself and feeling like he's recreating a meme.

Hayoung nods. “You.”

He could name better candidates for leader—five of them, in fact. He’s his own last choice. “Why not Violet? Or Tyler?” Violet developed a reputation on IGNITE! for her past experience and the leadership skills she somehow gained from it. Tyler is, well, Tyler—brash, confident, charismatic. Ash, on the other hand, is quite literally the clown of the group. It’s what he signed up for, because he has nothing to contribute except a witty comment or a well-timed pun.

“We’re confident you’ll do well,” Hayoung says without answering his question. It’s nice that she believes in him, but Ash is still far from believing in himself. “It suits you. It will be your job to act as the bridge between your group members and the company’s management team.”

“What about the music?” Ash asks next.

Hayoung looks confused. “What about it? The six of you will be responsible for your lyrics. As for the production, that's none of your concern.”

He wants it to be his concern. “I have some ideas, and I've already written a few—”

“It's taken care of. You should concentrate on your responsibilities as the leader.” This time, she cuts him off and checks her watch again. “If you'll excuse me, I have another meeting in five minutes.”

Ash can read the room. He knows when he's being dismissed. He puts on his best smile—he practiced that a lot on IGNITE!—and says, “I won't let you down.”

This time, Hayoung’s expression is warm and genuine. “I'm glad we can depend on you.”

Leaving her office gives him a bit of an ego boost. He might not want to be the leader, but he knows he can do it. His first step as leader will be to discover exactly what's going on with their debut album.

Ash retraces his steps from their tour of the C Entertainment building a few days ago. It screams corporate rather than entertainment—long empty halls, solid wooden doors, the feeling that any sound over fifty decibels will result in your death. It seems bigger than it has to be. He'd bet money that the majority of the rooms are empty or unfinished.

The music production wing is the only one with life. Quite literally, because Ash remembers the wall made of grass. It has a few shelves cut out in it, soft light haloing the releases of C’s other artists for a total of three albums. He envisions Lightspeed's alongside them. Their future is bright.

Light leaks out from under the door with “LIGHTSPEED” typed on a piece of paper and taped to it. Ash knocks and then enters, fully prepared to bow ninety degrees to their production team of two girls his age.

Only one of them is there—Haera, he thinks. She's slumped in an expensive ergonomic chair, cast in the blue hue of the four computer monitors spanning her desk. Posters of anime characters and Hatsune Miku decorate the wall behind her.

“Hello,” he says hesitantly, because he has the Korean vocabulary of a kpop stan combined with someone who watches exclusively violent gang movies.

She bolts to her feet, bowing a few times and saying something. Ash recognizes one word—sorry. The rest of the syllables wash over him, intimately familiar and completely incomprehensible.

“Okay,” he says, gesturing for her to sit back down. He wishes Violet or their manager, Logan, was here with him to help translate. He's here for one thing, so he gets to the point. “Music. Lyrics. Write.” He mimes writing in the air.

An expression of understanding dawns on Haera’s face as she takes a seat again. “Ah. Now? Only you?” she asks in English.

He hadn't planned on starting now, because he didn't plan farther than beating Hayoung to the punch. Ash nods anyway.

From somewhere on her desk, Haera produces a large stack of papers, a CD in a jewel case, and a flash drive.

“Four songs,” she says, holding up four fingers on one hand. She divides the stack of papers—now he sees that they're split into sections, held together with binder clips. She picks up the largest stack. “Title.”

He nods, assuming the other three are to be b-sides.

Haera points out the CD and flash drive next, miming headphones. “Listen. Okay?” She gives him two thumbs ups.

Ash smiles and mimics her gesture. “Okay.” He takes the papers and the CD and the flash drive and secludes himself in the far corner of the room.

A few days ago, he thought it was much too extravagant to be provided with not only a recording studio but also whatever this is—a recreation room? An office? A computer lab? A mini concert hall? Now he appreciates that he can hide behind too many screens the same way Haera is. At home, he used lock himself in his closet, pad it with noise cancelling foam, balance his laptop on his knees while holding his microphone, and then record. This setup knocks that one out of the park.

He starts to skim through the papers, finally feeling like he's back in his element. He still doesn't appreciate Hayoung assigning him to be the leader without even asking. Whatever. It's part of his responsibility now, as the leader, to help ensure Lightspeed’s success.

The notes, which are in English, thankfully, are clear and easy to follow. Some of the pages are just pictures—NASA photographs and science fiction film screenshots and Pinterest mood boards. Whoever designed had a clear vision in mind, and Ash can't help but begin to think of some famous last words. It can't be that hard. Right?

EV spends his last day as a normal, non-celebrity in the most normal way he can think of. He supposes he might already be considered a celebrity after his appearance on IGNITE! Already, he can't go outside without an escort—for now, it’s Lightspeed’s manager, Logan. For the past few weeks, Ev has privately wondered how a Japanese American from the Phoenix suburbs becomes the manager of a not-quite-kpop group. He still doesn’t quite know where Phoenix is. Mia asked once and got an answer about Arizona and California and deserts. Ev’s sketchy knowledge of American geography places California on one coast and New York on the other. He figures there’s space for a desert somewhere in there.

As far as initial impressions go, he likes Logan. He might be almost a full decade older than Ev, but he’s kind and polite, if slightly aloof. Not to mention he's onboard with Ev’s current goal of visiting every coffee shop within a fifteen kilometer radius of Lightspeed's house. It turns out there are a lot of coffee shops, especially once he started counting the ones that are conjoined with other businesses, the ones that are pop-up kiosks in shopping centers, and the ones that are known for selling other foods, but still serve coffee.

He might have drawn his circle too large, but it's given him an excuse to visit another bookstore. It doesn't matter that Ev doesn't understand Korean—it’s more about the vibe. That, and Logan is fluent.

“What about this one?” Ev asks, picking up another slim paperback from the bestseller’s section. The top half of the cover is white, with a title that he could sound out if he was given long enough. The bottom half looks like a stock image of space, a crescent moon and a few stars set over a dark blue backdrop. He’s been eyeing the depths of the store for the past ten minutes, too afraid to take the plunge into somewhere completely unfamiliar. Out here, at least, he’s already recognized Han Kang’s Human Acts and Sohn Won-pyung’s Almond.

Logan takes a closer look. “Hwang Sok-yong’s Gaebapbaragibyeol. It's a poetic way to describe the planet Venus. I'm not sure about this one, but some of the author's other works have been translated into English.”

That explains the cover. Ev nods politely and reshelves it.

He ends up walking out empty-handed, because he might as well be illiterate, but Logan buys a Korean edition of Anna Karenina.

“For all the late nights at Music Bank,” he says before Ev can even ask.

Five minutes later, after a short walk across the bookstore to their conjoined coffee shop, Ev is eleven thousand won broker. The oat milk substitution in his iced latte was nearly a third of the price of the drink itself. Sitting down near the window, he asks Logan the question that’s been on his mind the entire time they spent looking at books.

“How did you have answers to everything I asked in there?”

Logan’s response is short and factual. “I came to Korea to study literature, and you were in the bestsellers section. I got my PhD a couple of years ago.”

Ev almost spits his drink out before he realizes there might be some truth to the first part of that statement. Put him in Waterstones and he’d recognize all the bestsellers too. “You have a PhD? Should I be calling you Dr. Miura?”

Logan—Dr. Miura?—shakes his head, stirring his double shot vanilla mocha. Ev can’t understand why he opted for a hot coffee in the middle of a summer day. “My first name is fine. It’s not like I’m a professor.”

“Was that your plan? To be a professor?” Ev asks, now overly curious. It’s like his own pre-IGNITE! idea to study English lit into grad school and beyond is materializing right in front of him. After that, he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life. Now, all those plans have gone out the window.

“At first, I wanted to be a translator. Professor or teacher would have been fine in a pinch.”

And now he’s managing an idol group, though Ev doesn’t think he has much more to do than ensure their schedules never overlap. They’re all adults. They can take care of themselves.

Ev prompts him again. “How did you end up here?” He gestures vaguely to himself, as if to say, how did you end up babysitting me?

“It’s a long story.”

His ice cubes are watering down his drink—which wasn’t very good in the first place—but he doesn’t mind. He says so out loud, and Logan’s mouth twists into what might have been a grimace.

“I moved to Seoul in 2017, a year after I got my bachelor’s. It was between here and Hong Kong. Some of my college professors recommended a few programs to me after I expressed an interest in learning another language. After I picked Korea, I met Hayoung.”

Ev bites his tongue gently, working hard to not interrupt him. He has questions on top of questions to ask. Why not Hong Kong? What was his degree in? Hayoung, their boss?

“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it through the program. My advisor hated me. He used to host department events and invite everyone down to the Korean undergrads but never the international students. I graduated in 2022, and Hayoung offered me a job during C’s founding. I was supposed to manage Sejun at first. No one knew he was bringing along his former group’s manager until he did. Then it was TFTS for a few months—have you heard of them?” He pauses here.

“A little,” Ev says. He doesn’t admit that he only found out about them after he won IGNITE!

“I thought so. That venture didn’t last long. IGNITE! was in the beginning stages of production then, and it was a given I’d stay on to work with the winners. And now I’m here.” Logan takes a long drink and then gestures across the table. “Your turn.”

For some reason, Ev hesitates. He knows it’s hypocritical after he’s asked Logan to tell his life story. But Ev’s never enjoyed talking about himself, and he can already tell he’s like the British, less qualified version of his manager. “Can we stick a pin in that?”

Logan gives him a long look before he acquiesces. “Alright. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow. We should head back.“ He stands up to dispose of his cup.

Ev shakes the remaining ice shards in his drink. He’s barely given his debut a thought in the past few hours. There isn’t much to think about. Lightspeed will succeed, and his name will be written in kpop history forever.

#AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT — TRANSMISSION.#AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT — DEVELOPMENT.#fictional idol community #idol oc #kpop oc #kpop au #kpop addition

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