In too deep, p.1
In Too Deep, page 1
R.L. Carroll
In Too Deep
Book One in the Idolverse Series
First published by R.L. Books 2024
Copyright © 2024 by R.L. Carroll
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-7382543-1-6
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Three cheers for delulu pills and throwing them out the window.
Keep daydreaming.
This one is for my kpopies.
Thank you for helping me find a home.
Contents
Acknowledgement
Intro and Glossary
1. Panic and Petunias
2. Fickle Fate
3. How I Met Your Father
4. And In Came A Lion
5. Raccoon Cafes and Lattes
6. The Singer
7. One Big Family
8. Take Out Containers
9. Food By Bear
10. Girl Boss
11. Sleep With Me
12. Patty Cake
13. KPopducation
14. Blurry Pictures
15. Red Paint Stains
16. And Then There Were Five
About the Author
Acknowledgement
Thank you to my beta readers and editors. You polish my writing into the gem it is. Thank you to the readers who found and loved my story in it’s chaotic fic version, your words and praises are fully to blame for this books creation.
Another thank you to my partner, who encourages me and spoils me in my delusions. Thanks for being my grass to touch when I lose myself, and for motivating me to keep working on this project when I started to lose sight of my goal.
Finally, thank you to those of you who read this. I wrote something that normally stays on AO3. It’s “unpopular” and doesn’t fit a genre mold, especially not the cookie cutter romance one. But that’s okay, because neither do we. So I hope you find amusement, escape, or even love when you read this.
Intro and Glossary
Omegaverse: an alternate universe in fiction where human biology evolved to have sub-genders that follow the wolf hierarchy. In my fictitious world there are no physical differences in the human body except for the secretion of pheromones, or scent.
Alpha: the ‘top’ dog, dominant, aggressive, providers. They are typically well built and have strong physical features, as well as instincts and scents.
Beta: middle ground, often the peacemakers. They typically are most ‘human’ in that they don’t have strong scents or instincts.
Omega: the bottom, or ‘submissive’. Often treated as ‘breeders’ or lesser than. Highly sexualized, yet also the homemakers. Their scents can be as strong as an Alpha, however tend to be sweeter.
Scent/pheromones: much like our sweat, but coated in pheromones that can affect others emotionally and physically. A person’s scent smells different to everyone, usually invoking some emotion or memory associated with it. Strong scents can be used to calm someone down, and emotions can affect, and be smelled, through the pheromones.
Mate: a partner within a pack.
Pack: a found or made family pod. Oftentimes mated to each other in a romantic capacity. Modern packs are usually family units, however sometimes include platonic members as well.
KPop: Korean Popular Music. Unlike western pop, it can be a multitude of musical genres, as well as be made by non-ethnic Koreans.
Idol: a musician in the KPop industry.
Trainee: someone being trained to be an idol by one of the entertainment companies. Average length is under 3 years, where they will go through rigorous training in music, dancing, press, languages and more.
Debut: when a group releases their first album and debuts to the world. Hierarchy within the industry depends on debut date, therefore a group who debuts in 2018 will be seniors to a group who debuts the following year, regardless of the ages of the members.
Comeback: period when a group releases a new album and promotes it on music shows, reality programs, and social media.
Entertainment Companies: unlike western music, these companies have a strong hold over their idols and trainees, imposing strict rules and guidelines like diets, dating bans, whether they can change hairstyle, when to talk to fans etc.
Dorms: groups, and trainees, live together in dormitory style apartments, monitored by the companies and managers.
Maknae: the youngest member, often doted upon by the older members.
Aegyo: the act of making cute faces or expressions, used on reality programs or in content to make fans/others laugh.
Bias: someone’s favourite member.
Bias wrecker: the second favourite who threatens the favourite’s spot.
Sasaeng: a crazed fan, or stalker, who can range from disrespecting personal space, to acts of violence.
Korean Honorifics: a very complex subject but integral to understanding Korean culture. Generally, speaking to someone in a higher position, or who is older, than you requires a polite form.
‘Nim’ or ‘ssi’: attached to names or titles to show respect. There are levels of honorifics, with friends of the same age being the most casual polite form. Which is why age is often brought up in early introductions to decide how they should address you. If you are close to someone you can use other titles as a casual show of respect:
Hyung: what a younger male calls an older male whom they are close to.
Eonnie: the female version of Hyung, from a younger female to older female.
Oppa: from a younger female to an older male.
Noona: from a younger male to an older female.
1
Panic and Petunias
Where the hell is this restaurant? I swear to God I’ve passed this park three times already. That’s the same old lady sitting on the bench! Ugh. Stupid Google maps and stupid me for thinking I could go to a foreign fucking country and not know the language.
You looked at your phone for the umpteenth time. The map said you were in the right place, but the area was so dense, and the roads were more like alleys and sidewalks. You knew basic Korean, could read the Hangul letters, but that didn’t mean squat when you had no idea what you were reading.
You sighed, thinking you should have hired a translator. Or taken the car the company had offered you. At least that came with a chauffeur who wouldn’t get lost like you.
“I just wanted some dumplings. Is that a crime?” You mumbled out to the universe. Your feet were starting to hurt, so you walked over to a bench in front of a beautiful array of flowers. You turned your back to the park, deciding to face them to take some pictures. There were some that were the most beautiful purple ombre.
It was only your second day in Seoul, and finding you’re lost and staring at flowers would surprise no one who knows you. You have a bad habit of wandering off and getting yourself into weird situations. There was that one day you wanted to go for a hike and ended up stumbling into a secluded cult in the middle of the forest. They had been really nice though, and the grilled tofu and tomato salad was still one of your go-to barbecue recipes. It wasn’t always such an agreeable situation, though. Once you got lost in Mexico City and stumbled into a drug sting operation. You really wanted a coffee, and you were also naturally clumsy. The silver lining with that one was that it gave you a great plot point for one of your books.
Which, in a roundabout way, was kind of why you were in your position today. Not the lost part, that was solely on your need for dumplings. Rather, it was why you were in Seoul to begin with. You were meeting with publishing companies who wanted to bid on the Korean translation of your newest book. Luckily, being the witty and overconfident youngster you were, you had retained your rights for translations in your contract. Score one for the underdog. Kinda. It meant you had to decide on who was going to publish and translate your work, and you were very picky.
With the last installment of your series set to come out in a few months in English, you should have already decided on this. But, being the procrastinator that you were, you’d put it off. And now, your company had all but buckled your ass in the plane themselves. Seriously, agents were so pushy.
You have three meetings set up over the next two weeks. Korea had always been somewhere you wanted to visit, so you made sure to leave yourself lots of time to play tourist. Your first meeting wasn’t for another three days. Your manager hadn’t loved the idea of you spending your days exploring on your own, but you hated being “guarded”. Look, you’ll admit, their logic is sound. It’s not the safest for an unmarked Omega to be walking around alone. Especially one that could possibly be recognized. Very bold underline on the possibly, because who really remembered what their favorite author looks like? No one.
Still. You’re not a complete idiot. You bought one of those self-defense key chains, with the sharp pointy things and mace. And you also took self-defense classes for a couple years. For a bookworm, you were pretty athletic, which isn’t saying much. Although, right now all you wanted was a hot bath and your kindle.
And dumplings. Your stomach rumbled angrily at you. Sighing, you stood up to restart your search.
“I hear you, gosh. You’re so needy, you know that? It’s been like… Three hours. You can wait and digest some of this baby fat while you’re at it.” You rattled off to yourself. Probably a weird habit, but you found yourself talking aloud often. Chalk it up to the antisocial life you led.
Taking out your phone to pull up the map again, you began walking without looking up. But before you could go further you stopped dead in your tracks, body frozen. The wind had picked up, gusting around you and changing directions. Underneath the smells of fall leaves, fragrant flowers and dirt, was the scent of salt and ocean and sun. It smelled like sun kissed skin and salt caked hair.
It smelled like Alpha. And more than that, it smelled like Mate.
Mate. Your head spun, it was like all the lights in your brain turned off, and instead of walking into a familiarly lit room you fell off a cliff. The word mate echoed in your head over and over. After what seemed like a millennia, but was really only a few seconds, your head snapped up. The owner of the scent was standing five feet away, phone in hand and just as frozen in shock as you.
You couldn’t see much of his face, the bottom half being covered by a black mask and a beanie covering his hair. But his eyes, his striking brown eyes, were wide and boring into you. He was dressed in a plain black T-shirt, black pants and white sneakers. Nothing special about any of it, and yet something inside of you screamed out at how special he was. Not something, your omega, she was the one doing the screaming and you wished now more than ever you could get her to shut up.
Instead of doing that, or moving or doing anything else moderately helpful, your gaze traveled and took in every tiny detail it could. He was muscular, but not in an overt way, his arms defined and his shoulders wide. His skin was pale, like really pale, but marbled beautifully with azure veins across his hands and arms. And up his -
You fell off a cliff again. Except this time, you turned and jumped off it willingly. On your supposed Mate’s neck were overlapping silver bite marks. You couldn’t tell how many from here, only seeing them because the light fell through the leaves just right to hit the scars.
He was bonded. With a pack. A sizable pack. Fuck.
No, you couldn’t stay here. He’s got a pack, clearly this is a mistake. Yep, good old mother nature playing tricks, you try and reason with yourself.
Either way, you’ve adequately shocked yourself into motion. And that motion is running in the opposite direction and not looking back.
* * *
DAMON
On the other end of Seoul, earlier that day…
Across the mountain across the mountain
Across the river across the river
He blindly reached for his phone that was blaring out the beginning verses of his alarm. He wasn’t exactly awake, but it was loud and aggressive enough that it got stuck in his head, keeping him from completely drifting back to sleep.
He turned over on his stomach, letting the thin black blanket flip off him. It was 6 am, which meant he’d gotten about four hours of sleep. His head was spinning, and his body felt like it was weighed down by bags of sand. He was slow to wake up, but as his snooze went off, he finally sat up, running his hands through his hair and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Last night he’d stayed up later than he intended, no surprise there. He tried this time, he went to the gym to tire himself out, which kind of worked. But an hour after he’d laid down for bed he got antsy, staring up at the purple and blue hues reflected on his white walls from his lights. The anxiety always got worse at night, and the surefire way of shutting it up was to throw himself into work. So, work he did. Which led to many more hours until he was struggling to stay upright and eventually collapsed into his bed. He was impressed he even made it in the bed, with the blanket on and everything. Four hours was fine, he’d be fine. That was the mantra he repeated until he believed it.
The morning had them in the practice room, working on new choreo for next spring. Bright fluorescent lighting lit the wide space, reflecting off light wood floors and the wall of shining mirrors. They were having trouble with one section, the moves just didn’t match up with the transition after the second verse. Minju was working on it with the choreography team, and while the routine was awesome, really, it was just… missing something. It was probably his perfectionist tendency since no one else shared his feelings.
They still had three months until they were scheduled to start shooting material for it, which is plenty of time. Still, it left him in a bad mood when they finally called it and everyone left for their own schedules.
“Dae-Hyung, can you hold up for a second?” He stopped where he was bent over picking up his bag. He shrugged it on and faced Hansung, who had spoken.
“What’s up Sung?”
Hansung raised his hand and pushed back his sweat-soaked bangs. His hair was growing out, the tips lighter than brown roots and hanging over his face. It made his round cheeks appear smaller. “Do you have a schedule tonight?”
Damon shrugged, taking his phone out to check his calendar, despite knowing his schedule by heart. “I have some tracks to work on, and the costume department sent over some sketches. Besides the gym, I think I’ll be pretty free. Why?”
Hansung was studiously watching his feet twitch together. His grey t-shirt was stained with sweat, but he still looked and smelled great to him. “Uhmmm. I know it’s kinda out of the way, but well, I was watching this video on street foods and it was really cool how they prepared things. Like in Mexico there’s these drinks that are beer but then have a bunch of food on them like one place puts a whole burger on top-”
Damon rolled his eyes and reached out to grab his omega’s shoulder, shaking him a little. “Sung, I love you. I do. But I am too tired to speak Sungie okay? Use less words please.”
“Ah, Hyung, can you pick up some dumplings from that place I like please?” He looks up now, his eyes wide and lower lip stuck between his teeth. He was really pulling out all the stops today, Damon thought as he instantly melted. Hansung was their one Omega, but at times you couldn’t tell. He was broad shouldered, with a tiny waist, his chest muscles well defined and arms chiselled though still lean. He carried himself with the cockiness of an alpha half the time. The other half…
