cold | junhao

二十二

"I need to talk to you."

With everything that's been going on recently, Jun finds himself apprehensive to follow his manager and hear him out. It's rare that they single him out, and so doing it now is only adding to Jun's worry. 

Park shuts the door behind them and immediately turns to Jun, face still unreadable. "There's a rumour that's been floating round for the past few days about you, Jun." Internally, Jun rolls his eyes. He should've known. What else would it be about? 

"It's not true," he says, "Shuhua is my cousin."

They sit down on the sofa side by side, Jun shuffling as far over to one end as he can without seeming rude. 

"I'm aware," Park responds, and it looks like he's about to talk again until jun cuts him off.

"And even if I was dating someone," he argues, "I've been here for two years - my ban is up anyway."

Park shakes his head. "It was lengthened to three years a couple of weeks ago. You should've been sent an email.'

Over the past few seconds, Jun's heart has started beating faster. Fuck, he thinks to himself.This is bad. "I was never sent an email," he grits his teeth, just hoping that Park doesn't notice the way his hands shake in clenched fists. "No one told me anything. Why was it even lengthened?"

"We've been employing more younger adults in the past year, and more of them are breaking the policy."

He scoffs, "So you extend it? That's bullshit." 

Slowly, Park stands up. He shrugs his shoulders. "It shouldn't bother you unless you have something to hide." As he leaves, he raises his eyebrow at his employee in the mirror, and Jun despises the tugging smirk at the corner of his lip. What a bastard, he glares after him. 

After allowing himself a few minutes to regain his stance and calm down, Jun follows him back into the studio, storming over to Yuqi as soon as he sees her on the sidelines, standing alone while Yeji and Renjun are both occupied. 

"Park knows something," he mutters.

Yuqi stares at him blankly, "Knows what? What do you mean?"

"Minghao," he seethes, "He knows something about Minghao - I can tell, but there's no way he could - I only told you three." He pushes towards the other two, who've just come off the set and are slowly walking towards them. However, he doesn't get far because Yuqi pulls him back.

"Woah woah woah," she says. "You can be pissed all you want, but don't go blaming one of us if you spoke a little too loudly." Jun throws a piercing glare at her, and Yuqi holds up her hands as if to say I said what I said.

"But this is bad," Jun's voice drops, so soft that Yuqi struggles to hear it. "Really bad... Did you know our ban is three years now?" She shakes her head.

"Well it is, and no one bothered to tell us about it."

"Hey guys!" Yeji calls as she and Renjun finally meet up with them. "You're on in like, three minutes."

"Both of us?" 

She nods. "They changed their minds last minute, they want two people in each of the photos. It's crazy, I don't even know what they're using us for."

Jun shrugs, "Probably a magazine or something." Without waiting around any longer, he tugs on Yuqi's wrist and they walk through the groups of people. He gravitates closer to Yuqi's side the deeper into the crowd they get, forcing himself to move away once they break through the other side. Everything happens in a blur, as people flurry around them, directing them in front of cameras with demands on how to position themselves and what expressions to show. Jun follows it all without listening - an effect of doing the same thing for years - and hardly remembers the orders afterwards.