The men of S

Chapter 5: Neon Confessions (2013)

The bassline throbbed through Taipei’s most exclusive speakeasy like a faulty heartbeat. Bai Yutong tightened the silk sash of her trench coat, its crimson lining flashing as she pushed past bouncers shaped like refrigerators. Onstage, a bald man in a holographic bomber jacket manipulated turntables with surgical precision, his face obscured by strobe lights.

“Three vodka sodas,” she told the bartender, slapping down a VIP card embossed with Lu Yaqin’s phoenix logo. “And tell the DJ I want less EDM, more *feeling*.”

The music shifted abruptly—a sultry remix of *The Moon Represents My Heart* spliced with distorted static. Yutong froze. She hadn’t heard that particular arrhythmia since 2002, when a broke Korean backup dancer named Han Zaixun used to play it on his cracked Walkman.

“Still running from ghosts?” A voice rasped in her ear, smelling of soju and clove gum.

She turned to find Zaixun leaning against the bar, his once-muscular frame now gaunt beneath LED mesh. The rose quartz pendant around her neck warmed unnaturally.

“You’re supposed to be bankrupt in Busan,” she said, counting the new tattoos on his knuckles: *SIN* on the left, *RED* on the right.

“You’re supposed to be breastfeeding in Manhattan.” He slid her a cassette tape labeled *For the Monster* in Hangul. “Heard your husband’s into collecting flight attendants.”

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Yuxuan’s scream shattered the penthouse silence. “You brought *him* here? The guy who ghosted you after your abortion?”

Yutong adjusted the ice pack on her temples. Jet lag and Zaixun’s absinthe cocktails had left her veins buzzing. On the marble floor, her toddler son stacked jade chess pieces into unstable towers.

“It’s strategic,” Yutong said, tossing the cassette into a Gucci diaper bag. “Lu Yaqin’s spies are tracking Liheng’s mistresses. Let them report I’ve got a lover too.”

“But a *failed idol*?” Yuxuan kicked the reality show script splayed on the couch—*Princess Bootcamp*’s reboot, starring Yutong as the “Devil Mentor.” “You’re becoming a parody!”

The accusation hung between them, sticky as blood. Yuxuan’s phone buzzed—another alert about Xu Mingda’s latest “business trip” with a KTV hostess. She silenced it with a trembling hand.

“At least my parodies pay for your lawyer fees,” Yutong said softly.

A vase of peonies exploded against the wall. The toddler wailed as porcelain shards rained down.

“You think you’re better than me because you sell misery instead of swallowing it?” Yuxuan’s mascara bled into her collagen-plumped cheeks. “That plastic surgeon in Seoul? Mingda paid him to leak your X-rays. Your ‘rivalry’ with that new actress is trending because *we staged it*.”

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Zaixun’s loft reeked of solder and nostalgia. Yutong stepped over dismantled synthesizers, her stilettos catching on cables snaking like vipers. On a moth-eaten couch, he was restoring the same Walkman from 2002, its mangled tape of *The Moon Represents My Heart* spooling out.

“Why now?” She tossed the *Princess Bootcamp* contract at his feet. “They want me to humiliate trainees for ratings. You need exposure.”

He soldered a resistor without looking up. “You need someone who’ll say no.”

The rose quartz pendant vibrated

against her sternum. She remembered Zaixun stitching her torn dress before a Seoul audition, his hands steadier than any lover’s since.

“The show films at Lu Yaqin’s hotpot flagship,” she said. “We’ll burn it down metaphorically.”

He finally met her gaze. “Metaphors are for poets. I work in fire.”