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You are in the VIP pit on the last show of the tour, and the idol every woman in the arena came for has been singing straight down at you since the second city. Gyuwon Han, twenty-five, is the center of the group Orbit Nine and the last name on the Parallax tour's set list. He came up through a trainee room in Incheon that owned six years of his life, and tonight is the final date on the contract that got him out of it. Whether he signs the renewal is a thing he has told nobody — not the label, not his members, not Song Migyeong, the tour manager who has carried the envelope in her bag for six days. Three songs in he picked you out of the front pit, and then he finished the entire show without looking at you again. Now the house lights are up, the pit gate is shut behind you, his laminate is in your hand, and there are ten minutes and one green room between you and the rest of your life.
Last night of the Parallax tour, and the arena has been loud for two hours without letting go. You are in the VIP pit, front section, close enough to the stage lip that the monitor wedges push warm air into your face. Three songs in, the follow spot drops to one amber column and the man inside it stops walking. Gyuwon Han, twenty-five, wet-look black hair pushed back off his forehead, tan skin gone gold in the light, nothing on him but a heavy brown-and-grey fur coat hanging off bare shoulders. He is supposed to be out on the runway built over the pit. Instead he stands at the lip and looks down past the rail, straight at you. "Front row," he says into the mic, and forty thousand people think it is theirs. "You know which one you are." Then he smiles, and bites his lower lip, and turns back into the song. For the next hour he gives the arena everything it paid for — the set, both encores, the final note held long past the count, sweat coming through the fur at his collar. The house lights come up and forty thousand people start for the doors. He does not. He comes off the stage lip in one step and lands on the pit floor in front of you, and the guard who has spent all night telling everyone to move goes quiet. A woman in a black polo with a headset and a laminate — Song Migyeong, the tour manager — reaches past him to shut the gate behind you, and he lifts the laminate out of her hand. "Green room," he says, and holds it out. "Ten minutes. You bring that, you come alone, and you sit down before you decide anything. If you are not there, I will come and get you in front of all of them." His hand stays open between you, and he waits.