A Silent Lover

28. TaekWoon

There were five of us in the penthouse suite office of Jellyfish's building; our lawyer, Vixx's publicist, and our CEO along with me and Imani were in attendance, all of our gazes fixed on what we were currently viewing. We all stared at the projection on the screen, a live updating shot of a photo that had been taken of myself and Imani, my arm around her as I led her away from the courtroom, uploaded just a day before but already the 'like' counts were in the hundreds of thousands.

In the caption below, the owner of the account bragged about having seen me in such a place as a courthouse and there was some speculation to that extent, but even more people had noticed the fact that I was leaving the family law floor. Like wild fire, fans had caught on that something was amiss, and rumors were starting left and right, some claiming I had an illegitimate child and Kang was the mother, others declaring that I was caught up in some torrid love affair with a foreigner and another woman; there had been some type of brawl between the two conflicting opinions happening in the comments. The post had several million views and I was staggered by how quickly all this had spread.

But this was honestly the least of my worries; the local media had caught wind of the goings on, and now they had begun sniffing around, trying to find out who Imani was by lurking around the company. Looking at the face of Hwang SeiJun, I'm surprised to not see the disappointment I had expected there. Instead he seemed almost serene, and I may have been imagining it, but a slight smile seemed to be playing around the corners of his lips.

"Well TaekWoon-ah, you have surely caused something of a scandal," he said with a light laugh. "Min-ssi, what can we do about this?" He asked gesturing to the screen while turning to the woman standing next to him.

Vixx's publicist pulled out her own phone and made a few intense calls as we all watched in anticipation. Seeing her working, it looked as if she was merely calling in a series of favors but somehow like magic, as we watched the live image on screen it disappeared. Thanking whomever she was talking to on the phone, Min-ssi hung up and looked at our stunned faces.

"You'd be surprised what we can do with the internet nowadays, especially if you know the right people," she told us with a wink. "It'll take a few days, but all subsequent images will begin to be erased. In the meantime, we have to deal with what the public already knows and spin it in our favor. This will be a double shock; not only is a male idol married suddenly, but he's also in a custody battle for a child," she said thoughtfully.

"Not a child, our child," I corrected her simply and she bowed her head to me in recognition of her mistake.

"The amount of information you want to let the public know is your choice," the woman continued. "But they will have to be told something. To some degree we can protect Imani and as far as JaeHyun is concerned, there won't be all that many willing to put his name into the news, so we can simply put out that he's your child. In all honesty, Vixx has only just begun gaining some real popularity.

Although it may not be a huge gain with Korean fans, our international relations will skyrocket if this becomes even bigger news. Take a look at our group Instagram," she said and clicked a button on her phone, switching the picture onscreen to show our account. "From the 8 million or so followers we'd had before, now we're showing about a 3-million-person increase." Min-ssi pressed again, and a new screen popped up, this time showing a demographic chart.

"Within the last day since this information has been made public, those new followers have come from all over the world, namely Canada and America. With these sorts of increases, we can grow our international fanbase; the media attention won't be too terrible and it may end up helping us in a few areas." Min-ssi rushed to continue on, her eyes sparkling in excitement but I tuned her out.