My Ex Is a K-Pop Superstar

Part One — The Rewrite

Chapter 1 · Table Read · Nora · D-29

The man who dumped me seven years ago was calling my name—with a line I'd written.

"…Seo Ha-neul."

No mic, and his voice still reached the back of the room. Low. Dry. A little hoarse.

I froze with my pen resting on the script. The ninth-floor conference room of a broadcasting center in Yeouido, packed with nearly fifty people. The director, the head writer, the cast, the production company, and the Lumen executives who'd flown in from the American head office. Every single one of them was holding their breath and staring at one man.

It was eleven a.m. on the first of November. Sunlight slid through the blinds and laid stripes across the long table. On those stripes sat fifty water bottles and fifty scripts, spaced exactly the same. The ceiling heater pushed out a dry wind, and in it drifted the smell of fresh-printed paper, somebody's heavy perfume, and Americanos going cold. Outside the window, the ginkgo trees of Yeouido Park were already half bare and half gold.

I could hear someone swallow.

Yoon Jae-ha.

Number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Grammy nominee. His first Hollywood lead, number one at the North American box office two weeks running. The face Time put on its cover last month under the line The Most Famous Korean on Earth.

And my ex.

"Ha-neul. You're still holding that pen."

He was reading from the script. Technically, he was reading Kang Tae-o's line from the script. The first line of Scene 3, which I'd rewritten until four that morning.

The problem was, he wasn't looking at the script.

He was looking at me.

Three hours earlier.

"Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god."

"Nora, breathe. Breathe."

Park Dan-bi patted my back. I was gripping a sink in the third-floor restroom—a twenty-year-old restroom with sky-blue tiles cracked here and there. A lemon air freshener was losing its war with the bleach. The hand dryer in the last stall had been broken for three years, and the note taped above it—OUT OF ORDER – CONTACT FACILITIES—had gone yellow.

In the mirror was a pale blonde woman with dark circles under her blue eyes that reached her chin. The fluorescent light flattened her face from the top down. A face that had been rewriting a script until four a.m.

"They switched the male lead? The day of the table read?"

"Uh-huh. Jung Woo-bin got caught drunk driving last night. The production company's been on fire since three a.m. But the crazy part is—"

Dan-bi shoved her phone under my nose.

[EXCLUSIVE] Yoon Jae-ha joins Lumen Original The Last Scene… his first Korean drama lead

I snatched the phone and read the article three times. It was the same name all three times. Same photo too. An airport departure gate, black coat, sunglasses. A face that wasn't looking at the camera.

"Dan-bi."

"Yeah?"

"Can I call in sick today?"

"Are you insane? Writer Jung wants you to brief the revised draft before the read. A junior writer doing the briefing—that's never happened on our team. You literally cried yesterday about how this was your big chance."

I had cried. From joy. Three years of making coffee, digging up research, translating English dialogue, proofreading the head writer's pages at dawn—and this was the first real shot I'd gotten. I'd even called my mom in Austin. Mom, they're letting me present. She had no idea what that meant and said I'm so proud of you, baby five times anyway.

And on that day, of all days.

"But what's wrong with you? Are you a Yoon Jae-ha fan? I mean, who on this planet isn't?"

Instead of answering, I splashed cold water on my face.

Dan-bi didn't know. Nobody knew. That seven years ago I'd been in the debut lineup at Starline Entertainment. That on the roof of that practice building I used to split cup ramyeon with Yoon Jae-ha in secret. That on my twentieth birthday he'd given me a note in clumsy English: Happy birthday, my Texas girl.

Or what he said to me on the bank of the Han River a month before his debut.

You were never going to debut, Nora. Go back to your country. This isn't your place.

I hadn't forgotten a single syllable in seven years. Not one consonant.

"I'm fine," I said, wiping the water off. "Totally fine."

The woman in the mirror smiled. All teeth. The kind of smile my dad called Texas-style. The more you're losing, the bigger you grin. Keeps 'em guessing.

Fine. Let's do this.

I left the restroom and took the stairs up to nine. Reporters were mobbing the elevators. Every landing had a window, and with every floor the Han River got a little wider. Around seven, the water caught the sun and flashed white. I stopped there for a second. Somewhere along one of those bends, seven years ago, I'd heard those words. The river just glittered, like it didn't remember a thing.

I took the last two flights two steps at a time.

Now.

And now I was not fine at all.

"…Mr. Yoon?"

Director Choi Kang-hoon cleared his throat. The air in the room was moving wrong. Jae-ha had read the line to me instead of the page, and people were starting to follow his eyes.

One, two, ten. Forty eyes landed on me, at the writers' seats at the very end of the table.

I set down my pen and pretended to turn a page. The paper trembled against my fingertips.

"Jae-ha, feel free to read off the page," the director said. "You only got it today."

"I've memorized it."

A murmur went around the room. The script had gone out at eleven last night. Episodes one and two, a hundred and twenty pages.

"I do have one thing, though." Jae-ha closed the script. "A question."

"Oh—sure. Go ahead."

"Scene 3. The flashback where Kang Tae-o leaves Seo Ha-neul."

My fingertips went cold.

I'd written that scene. Writer Jung had sent it back three times—the feeling isn't landing—and last night I'd torn it down to the studs. A man leaving a woman. I hadn't needed to imagine a single line. I only had to remember.

"Who wrote this scene?"

Writer Jung Mi-ran adjusted her glasses. In the industry they called her Knife Jung. Legend had it that if an actor argued with one of her lines, she'd cut his screen time in half. It wasn't a legend. I'd watched it happen last year.

"It's our team's revised draft. This scene—" She glanced at me. "Our junior writer did the first pass. Writer Nora."

"Writer Nora."

Jae-ha said my name.

Seven years since I'd heard that voice shape it. Most Koreans say Nora flat—No-ra, both syllables the same weight. He'd always leaned on the first one a little. NOR-a. The English way. The way I taught him on that roof.

I stood up. My knees were shaking, but the table hid them.

"Yes. I wrote it."

"This is what Kang Tae-o says to Seo Ha-neul." He recited it without looking down. "'You were never meant to be here. Go back. This isn't your place.'"

The room went quiet.

My line. And the thing he'd said to me seven years ago. One word changed.

I lifted my chin.

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

"It's too cruel."

"…"

"If this man really loved this woman, he wouldn't have any reason to say it like that."

"Maybe he had a reason." I smiled. My professional smile. "Or maybe that's just the kind of man he always was."

"…"

"Viewers don't like men like that. So he's going to get punished later. A lot."

Somebody snorted and slapped a hand over their mouth. Dan-bi. Writer Jung turned her head; behind her glasses her eyes had narrowed. What do you think you're doing.

But I couldn't stop. Seven years of rage was sitting at the back of my throat.

"That man's going to be very, very miserable in the back half. You can look forward to it, Mr. Yoon."

He looked at me. For a long time.

And then he smiled.

Yoon Jae-ha, the Ice Prince. The man you could count his smiling public photos on one hand. The corner of his mouth went up, just slightly. Crooked.

I knew that smile. It was the one he used to make on the roof when I poured too much water into my cup ramyeon.

"Okay," he said. "I'll look forward to it."

He opened the script again, took out a pen, and wrote something.

"But fix one thing for me, Writer."

"What?"

"The last line."

He held up the script. Two lines struck through my dialogue. And beneath it, in his handwriting:

"I wouldn't leave like this."

The read went on for two more hours. I remember almost none of them.

What I remember is this: Yoon Jae-ha was perfect. Every scene, without one glance at the page. When Kim Yu-jin—our Seo Ha-neul—fumbled a line, he caught it and carried it like it was nothing. In the emotional scenes, he changed the air in the room. The Lumen people kept trading looks. I saw one of them mouth Holy shit.

And in those two hours, he did not look at me once.

Not once after Scene 3.

"Nora Ellis."

Everyone else had cleared out. Writer Jung said my full name. The worst possible sign.

"I'm sorry."

"For what."

"…Talking back to the actor."

"That's what you're sorry for?"

"…Sorry?"

She closed her laptop and swiveled her chair to face me.

"Yoon Jae-ha closing the script to ask a question—twenty-five years in this business and I've never seen it. A junior writer firing back at him? Never seen that either."

"…"

"Do you know him?"

My heart dropped.

"No," I said, instantly. "I don't know him."

A lie. She knew. Twenty-five years of turning people's insides into dialogue—of course she knew. But she didn't push. She slid a stack of papers across the table.

"Revised drafts, episodes three and four. Kang Tae-o's scenes are yours."

"What?"

"You just said it. That man's going to be very miserable in the back half." She stood. "So write it. Show me how miserable you can make him."

"Writer Jung, I really don't think—"

"Oh, and." She turned at the door. "Yoon Jae-ha's people just called. From now on, any questions about the script, he'd like to go straight to the writer in charge."

"…The writer in charge?"

"You."

The door shut.

I stood alone in the empty conference room.

With everyone gone, the room looked enormous. Fifty chairs shoved out at fifty different angles. Half-drunk water bottles, scraps of sticky notes, somebody's lip balm left behind. The two p.m. sun came in lower than before and lay down along the whole length of the table. Where the heater had shut off, the cold settled slowly. It looked like a stage after the show. Lights out, props left lying around.

And on the table, at his seat, a script had been left behind.

His name was on the cover. KANG TAE-O – YOON JAE-HA.

I picked it up. I was going to throw it out. I really was.

But it fell open on its own to Scene 3. The page had been folded and unfolded so many times the corner had gone soft. In one night.

In the margin beside my line was tiny handwriting. Not from the read—the ink had already dried and bled. He'd written it last night, alone, reading it for the first time.

This is Nora's writing.

And one more line beneath it.

She's still so angry.

I slammed the script shut.

"Son of a—"

I didn't get to the end of it. My throat closed.

That night, after Dan-bi fell asleep, I opened my laptop.

A one-room on the second floor of a three-story villa in Mangwon-dong—one room, one tiny kitchen. Dan-bi was buried under her comforter on the mattress by the wall, snoring softly. Outside, the last shop in Mangwon Market rattled its shutter down. Rrrrk—clang. The old boiler hiccuped every so often. The floor was lukewarm and the air was cold. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and hunched over the low floor desk. The white glow of the screen was the only light in the room.

New file. Title: Ep. 3 – Revised. And the first line.

S#14. Hotel – In Front of the Fountain (Night)

Kang Tae-o is slapped by Seo Ha-neul, stumbles backward, and falls into the fountain.

Not once. He tries to get up and falls in again.

The cursor blinked. I watched it blink and smiled.

You said you'd look forward to it, Yoon Jae-ha.

So look forward to it.

Chapter 2 · Twenty-Nine Days · Jae-ha · D-29

The phone rang at 2:17 a.m.

I was awake. I'm always awake now. When sleep comes, I count. Days left until the contract ends. Thirty. That night it was thirty.

"Hyung. You up?"

Tae-sik.

"Yeah."

"Jung Woo-bin got a DUI. The male lead on The Last Scene. The production company's losing it. The table read's tomorrow—no, today. Ten a.m."

"And?"

"You asked me for the files on that show last week. So. Just in case."

I sat up in bed. The room was dark. The Hannam-dong place is too big. With the lights off, I don't know where the walls are.

The ventilation ran low somewhere in the ceiling. Nothing else. The fridge is empty, so it doesn't make noise either. I put my bare feet on the floor. Marble. Cold. Soles to knees, all at once. Through the glass wall, which has never had curtains, a few lights were left in the apartment towers across the river. Eleven. Few enough to count.

There was a reason I'd asked for those files. A Lumen Original, releasing in 190 countries. The Chairman wanted it. I just wanted to see the staff list. Because of one name at the bottom.

Writers — Jung Mi-ran (Head), Lee Su-kyung, Park Dan-bi, Nora Ellis

The first time I saw that name was three years ago. A flight to New York. I couldn't sleep, so I put on a Korean indie film. The English subtitles were unusually good. Korean jokes turned into English jokes, like someone sitting next to you and translating. The end credits rolled.

English Subtitles by Nora Ellis.

I paused it there. Until the flight attendant brought a blanket. And I didn't play it again before landing. If I played it again, I'd look her up. If I looked her up, I'd contact her.

There was Clause 12.

"Tae-sik."

"Yeah."

"Let's do this show."

I heard him swallow.

"Hyung. There's one month left on your contract. The Chairman—"

"The Chairman will say yes once he sees the money. You know what Lumen pays."

"That's not what I mean." He lowered his voice. "I saw the list too, hyung. Her name."

I didn't answer.

"…I know you haven't looked for her once in seven years. But this is going to her."

"No, it isn't."

"Then what is it?"

Out the window, the Han. At this hour the river was black.

"It's one month. One month and it's all over. Then I can tell her," I said. "I'm just choosing where to wait out that month."

He didn't say anything for a long time. Then:

"I'll wait outside the production office. Till morning."

Six a.m. The Chairman's approval came through. The second he heard the fee: Fine. Do it. He didn't ask about the staff. That man only ever looks at money, never at people. It's the only gap in him I found in seven years.

Seven. The script arrived. Episodes one and two. A hundred and twenty pages.

Tae-sik brought it from the production office himself. Still warm. Paper straight off the printer. Toner. Dawn air came in on his padded jacket. He fell asleep the moment he sat on the end of the sofa. His head tipped sideways.

Past the glass wall the sky went navy to gray, gray to a thin orange. Fog lay low on the river. I stood at the kitchen island and turned pages. Paper turning. Tae-sik breathing. Nothing else.

By eight I'd read it all. I stopped at Scene 3.

Kang Tae-o: You were never meant to be here. Go back. This isn't your place.

I traced the sentence with my finger. The paper caught on my fingertip.

I'd said this. More precisely, I'd read it. A sentence on a memo pad that was never mine.

She'd kept it seven years. One word changed.

I took out a pen. Wrote in the margin. This is Nora's writing. When she writes stage directions, she breaks the line instead of using a comma. The American way. Same as the notes we passed on the roof.

Then one more line. She's still so angry.

I thought: good. Angry means she hasn't forgotten.

Ten. Outside the conference room.

Gray carpet on the ninth floor. It swallowed footsteps. Shutter clicks followed from the elevators. Two security guards held back the reporters. Light from the window at the end of the hall made a long rectangle on the carpet. I walked around it without stepping on it. No reason.

The door was brown wood. The handle, brass, worn shiny by hands. A murmur leaked through the gap. Fifty voices. I tried to hear whether one particular voice was in there. I couldn't.

My hand was shaking. Tae-sik looked at it. Said nothing. That hand hadn't shaken at the Grammys.

The door opened.

Fifty people. Lights. Shutters. People stood. I bowed. I didn't smile. The Ice Prince. That was the mask I wore for seven years. If you don't smile, nobody asks what you're not smiling about.

And at the far end of the room, the writers' seats.

Blonde hair.

She wasn't looking at me. Head down, writing something on her script. Her fingers were tight on the pen. Knuckles white. She did that seven years ago too. Nervous, she grips the pen too hard.

Her hair was longer. Her shoulders more solid. Her cheeks thinner. Not the face of a twenty-year-old.

But the tips of her ears were red. When she's angry, or holding back tears, her ears go first.

That hadn't changed.

I sat. I opened the script. Didn't look at it. I'd memorized it. I couldn't look. If I looked, they'd see my hands.

Scene 3 came. I looked at her.

"…Seo Ha-neul."

She raised her head.

Blue eyes. I once told her they were like the Texas sky. She laughed and said the Texas sky was way bluer than that. That we'd go someday. Eat barbecue under it. Her dad would close the garage early and grill.

Those eyes were looking at me now like she wanted to kill me.

It felt good. Strangely. So good I couldn't breathe.