We spoke briefly a couple weeks ago, but I had to jump off to take a call on the other line from the handbag production team. Did he mention his new job then? The late-night texts I’ve received from him have just been normal Appa stuff, like—Glow is on the radio! Thinking of my talented daughter!! Followed by a heart emoji, a thumbs-up emoji, and, inexplicably, a unicorn emoji. No mention of Apex or his new role. But maybe that’s just because I never gave him a chance. I feel a stab of guilt thinking about how I usually just ignored the messages, or sent a cursory tap-back “like” in acknowledgment.

“Don’t worry,” Leah says, sensing my concern. “He knows how busy you are.”

But Leah is busy too. Her life as a debut idol is just as crazy as mine, and yet she seems totally in the loop—one of the benefits of living at home, I guess. My stomach clenches, thinking how if I didn’t have Leah as my go-between, I’d feel even more disconnected from my family than I already do.

“Well, keep an eye on him for me, will you?” I ask her. Then I snap another selfie of the two of us and send it off to Appa, along with about a hundred hearts, and make myself a promise to see him and Umma in person as soon as I can.

Twenty minutes later, our toes sufficiently dry, we’re getting ready to head to lunch when suddenly Leah says, “Hey, Unni…” She’s glancing at her phone as we clip off our mic packs and hand them back to the sound engineer. “Are you supposed to be at a rehearsal right now?”

“Huh? No. Why?”

She shows me her screen. All eight of my groupmates are clustered together for a selfie, posing with peace signs and finger hearts, Ari at the front. Quick selfie before practice! Now shall we start singing? her caption says.

Wait, what? I grab the phone out of Leah’s hand and zoom in on the photo. Yep, they’re definitely in one of DB’s practice rooms, and this was definitely taken today. I know that Ari was wearing that same striped T-shirt with the rose-gold heart locket when I left the house this morning. I’ve never missed a rehearsal before. At this point in our career, we’re expected to know our numbers after just one or two times running through them, so we don’t even have that many rehearsals anymore. They’re only scheduled for something big, or for when we need to learn a whole new song. Is that what I’m missing out on right now? How could this have happened? DB wouldn’t have scheduled a reality-show shoot day if I also had practice.

“I’m calling my manager,” I say, reaching for my own phone.

“Hello?” Jongseok answers.