Park Sunghoon

It was your fourth week working with ENHYPEN, and the building already felt smaller than it had on day one.

Schedules stacked without mercy: practice, content, fittings, the constant rotation of chairs and brushes and members who only half-registered the people fixing their faces. You had learned the order of things quickly. Who sat still. Who talked through powder. Who thanked you. Who didn’t.

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Jake had just left your chair with a grin and an easy “thanks,” the kind of warmth that made the job feel briefly human. Another makeup artist had taken Sunghoon while you finished, a swap that happened without announcement, the way most things happened around him. By the time you crossed the room with the comb and the finishing spray, his base was already set, earphones in one hand, gaze somewhere past the mirror.

You stepped in behind him anyway. Hair was still yours to correct.

The moment your fingers touched the first strand at his temple, the air changed.

Sunghoon didn’t raise his voice. He rarely needed to. In the mirror, his eyes found your reflection and held it, not the polite check of an idol confirming symmetry, but something tighter, colder, as if he had been counting how long you had stayed on Jake’s face and had already decided the number was wrong.

“You’re late,” he said, quiet enough that the rest of the room could pretend not to hear. A pause. His jaw shifted under the light. “Next time, you don’t start with him.”

His hand came up, not to stop you, not fully, fingers closing around your wrist with just enough pressure to still the comb.

“Do the hair. Only the hair.” Another beat, lower. “And if I see you laughing in someone else’s chair like that again, we are going to have a different conversation after call.”

The grip didn’t ease.

“Understand?”

Your workday started well today.

The stage had gone clean, lights, formations, the kind of encore that left the crowd still screaming while the members came off with sweat through the collars and in-ears dangling. You moved through the post-show rhythm the way you had for the last four weeks: blotting, resetting, powder on Heeseung’s T-zone, a quick fix on Jungwon’s brow, Jake tipping his head back with that easy smile while you corrected the edge of his liner. Sunoo joked about the heat. Ni-ki asked for water without looking up. It was ordinary. Professional. The kind of night that was supposed to end with sanitizing brushes and a late ride home.

You didn’t notice the exact moment Sunghoon’s silence changed shape.

Maybe it was how long your thumb rested at Jake’s jaw. Maybe it was the laugh you didn’t swallow fast enough when someone else said your name. Maybe it was only that he had been watching the whole time and had already decided the count was too high. By the time the corridor outside the main dressing room thinned, his hand was already on your elbow, not a request. A redirection.

The side door shut behind you harder than staff doors were supposed to shut. His palm left your arm only long enough to turn the lock. Then your back hit the surface, and his other hand covered your mouth before the first sound could leave it.

Sunghoon leaned in until the smell of stage and skin and expensive fabric filled the little space left between you. His eyes were not the camera ones. They were the ones from the mirror when he had told you not to start with someone else, only worse.

“Four weeks,” he said, voice low against the edge of his own hand, “and you still don’t know what you’re doing when you put your hands on them like that.”

His thigh pressed forward, pinning your hips to the door. The hand on your mouth did not ease. The other found the hem of your staff shirt and pushed under it with none of the patience he used for choreography.

“You laughed in his chair. You touched his face like you had time. Like I wasn’t sitting there counting.” A breath, sharp. His forehead nearly touched yours. “This is what happens when you forget which member you’re actually here for.”

Fingers dug into the soft skin above your waistband hard enough to bruise. His mouth hovered near your ear, still quiet enough that anyone passing in the outer hall would hear only silence.

“You’re going to stay quiet. You’re going to take what I give you against this door. And tomorrow, when you do my face again, you’re going to remember exactly why your hands don’t linger on anyone else.”

The hand over your mouth shifted just enough for air, not for argument.