Chapter Text
Jackson never thought that he’d be here when he said he was looking to do a photography gig on the side to pay for the new camera he was planning on getting. Here Jackson Wang is, a man in his early twenties, halfway through a business course in university, standing in the midst of a crowd facing a stage where a Korean-pop boyband is currently performing. Jackson has his camera trained on one person onstage with bright red hair, and it’s not the easiest job to follow him when he’s dancing all over the place.
Mark Tuan.
Jackson didn’t know of Mark’s existence until two days ago when he offhandedly complained about not being able to afford a lens kit that he had been saving up for since he had to invest in more textbooks for the upcoming semester. His whining went mostly ignored by his roommate, Youngjae, who didn’t really care to comment on the sorry state of Jackson’s finances until Jackson finally ran out of breath and stopped talking.
“Do you know ATK?” Youngjae suddenly asked, holding his phone away from his face as he looked Jackson in the eyes.
“No,” Jackson replied, but that was just the beginning.
ATK is short for Ameri-Thai-Korean, which is one of the cheesiest names anyone could think of even for the standards of a boyband. It’s not the most flattering of names, but it’s apt considering that the members of the boyband consist of three men from America, Thailand, and South Korea respectively. Jackson wouldn’t have cared to learn this piece of trivia if not for the fact that he has to follow them around for the next two weeks.
Youngjae’s question was followed up by an offer. It wasn’t especially persuasive, but granted that Jackson accepted it eventually, it was good enough even if it was bad. Youngjae’s sister was an avid fan of ATK, and her favourite member in the group was Mark. That was before she moved on to “better prospects” and became a fan of a solo artist who recently blew up after winning a dance competition.
Youngjae’s sister ran something called a fansite, which is a collection of photos taken of a celebrity, paparazzi-style, except by a fan. The concept still boggles Jackson’s mind now even as he snaps photos of Mark while Mark skips over to a corner of the stage to take a sip of water.
Basically, Youngjae’s sister wanted to shut down her Mark fansite after she decided she didn’t like Mark as much anymore. However, she built a huge following on Marked For Life and had a photobook that she was working towards that could potentially fund the creation of her new fansite. Fan culture is still fuzzy to Jackson’s head, but Youngjae’s sister could apparently sell certain products she made with the photos she took to other fans, and it would somehow come full circle to a point where she has the monetary means to continue doing what she does without having a proper day job.
Jackson just needed a million won to add to his current bank balance to be able to buy himself a new lens, but Youngjae’s sister promised him two million won if he would finish attending events “for the rest of ATK’s promotional period.” (He didn’t understand what that meant then, but the dates she jotted down for him after showed 15 days.)
Jackson didn’t want to commit to it at first, but the money sounded great, and she told him on the phone that the tickets she had for ATK’s events would go to waste if he didn’t agree to the offer because she’s busy with a project called Yugi-yum or something. With an empty schedule and an overwhelming sense of curiosity, Jackson relented. He doesn’t have much going on for the next two weeks and he’s always looking for excuses to skip his lectures, so getting paid to do it won’t hurt.
Watching Mark prancing onstage as he throws hearts and peace signs to the giggly schoolgirls in the mosh pit certainly hurts, though. Jackson remembers the samples of photos he saw online and takes as many shots as he can of Mark’s antics. The sound of his camera shutter goes off repeatedly as he takes snap after snap.
When ATK are ready to go offstage, Jackson deposits his camera into the sling bag he has on him and pulls his face mask higher on his face. God forbid that anyone here recognises him. He doesn’t wait for the next artists to get onstage before fleeing the venue of the open concert.
Back at home, Jackson gets text messages from Youngjae’s sister chiding him to upload “previews” which are supposedly just photos of the photos he took earlier at the event. He looks through the hundreds of pictures he took that night and chooses a few that he thinks are relatively decent. He takes a photo of his camera display on his phone and uploads the pictures onto the Twitter account for Marked For Life, labelling the date and the event exactly the way he was instructed to do.
He’s surprised to see that Marked For Life has over 200 thousand followers, and that the responses are almost immediate. His phone buzzes nonstop from the notifications on Twitter, and within two minutes, the tweet already has over a hundred retweets and likes. Some replies even come in with accounts saying “Thank you, master-nim!” and “Mark’s so cute!”
Jackson doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he shuts his phone down and attempts to edit the photos he took of Mark at the concert so he can pass them on to Youngjae’s sister next time.
As Jackson admires his own work, he notices that Mark isn’t too bad of a model. Mark has a head of hair dyed a bright red that won’t look right on just anybody, and Mark’s teeth are a perfect pearly white with a rather characteristic pair of sharp canines. It’s endearing the more Jackson looks at it, but Jackson pushes it to the back of his mind as he adjusts the colouring and exposure of the pictures on Photoshop.
These two weeks are going to be weird.
The worst thing about following a boyband whose market targets young girls isn’t the fact that Jackson has to follow them, but that Jackson has to interact with them. At least, that’s one of the activities on the agenda today as he’s attending a fan-signing, some sort of event where fans can get the autographs from their favourite boyband. Tickets were apparently hard to come by, and Youngjae’s sister hinted at the large amounts of albums she had to buy to have a higher chance of getting chosen for the fan-signing.
She sometimes buys tickets off of other fans, though, so she emphasised that Jackson has to “enjoy the experience” because she remembers how excited she was the first time she saw a celebrity in such close proximity. “Don’t forget that you still have to take photos, but of course you can’t do that when it’s your turn to meet them,” she said sternly before she left a small stack of tickets to subsequent events on Jackson’s desk the night before.
Back to the trouble of interacting with ATK, Jackson isn’t going to be able to do it with his disguise on. His face mask was confiscated from him when he entered the hall by a burly security guard at the front door. He claimed that it was precautionary so that nobody could shield their faces from the CCTV cameras in the venue. Jackson’s still unhappy that his face is uncovered, but even more so that he sticks out like a sore thumb as he’s sandwiched between rows and rows of girls screaming at the three men seated behind tables as they get ready to give autographs.
Jackson tries not to draw too much attention to himself as he focuses his camera on Mark, perched on a chair on the far left of the stage. Jackson thought it was an exaggeration when he was told to bring his long-focus lens, but he can see how it’s useful now that Mark is sometimes blocked by the girls standing in front of him as he interacts with them. Jackson has to move his camera to look for any opening where he can take a decent photo of Mark’s face, and with the hustle and bustle going on, he has to change positions every other minute.
It’s tiring as he squints behind his viewfinder. The space in front of Mark is finally free for awhile when one of his group members, presumably the Thai one named Bambam, is too engrossed in conversation with a fan in front of him. Mark spots a few DSLRs pointed his way in the crowd and poses with a peace sign for them, and Jackson manages to capture that from an angle.
He adjusts his lens as he watches Mark from the viewfinder, and Mark’s head that was looking away from him at first suddenly turns towards him, making direct eye contact with his camera lens. Jackson sees Mark squint at him in the viewfinder, and he takes a few shots of that before he catches a brief smile resembling disbelief on Mark’s face. Mark opens his mouth to say something, but the girl who was talking to Bambam moves in front of him and he diverts his attention to her instead.
Jackson lowers his camera to take a look at the pictures he just took. Sure enough, Mark’s eyes are looking right at his camera. He turns to look behind him to see if any of the other people have their cameras lifted in Mark’s direction, but he only sees a girl holding her phone up to take selfies as she waits. Does that mean Mark was looking at him earlier?
Jackson stares at the picture where Mark’s lips are puckered together as he tries to mouth something in Jackson’s general direction. Did Mark want to say something to him?
Those thoughts are interrupted when a coordinator calls the number on Jackson’s slip, letting him know that he can go onstage to get his album signed now. Jackson slips the cap onto the lens of his camera as he puts it back into his bag. He picks up his album and hurries towards the table where the Korean member smiles up at him kindly.
“Hello,” the Korean guy, Park Jinyoung, greets. He takes the album from Jackson gingerly, setting it down in front of him as he uncaps his Sharpie. “Who’s your favourite member?”
“What?” is Jackson’s response.
Jinyoung looks up. He gestures towards Jackson’s bag with his pen. “You run a fansite. Who’s your favourite?”
Jackson gawks at him for a moment. “I…” Jackson begins, and he catches the glare of a member of staff behind Jinyoung, probably urging him to spit it out so Jinyoung will sign his album and the line can move on. “Mark. I run a Mark fansite.”
Jinyoung laughs. “Who should I address this to, then?” he asks, signing onto the middle of a page in the album’s photobook. “Mark’s angel?”
Jackson doesn’t know if Jinyoung is making fun of him, but he doesn’t care to find out. “Marked For Life,” Jackson says simply, wanting to just get out of here. It’s bad enough that he’s one of the only men in line for their signatures, the fact that Jinyoung knows he runs a Mark fansite now only makes it worse.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Marked For Life master-nim,” Jinyoung says as he scribbles it onto the top of the page. He looks up, his eyes crinkled at the ends from a smile as he pushes the album over to Bambam. “Have a good day.”
Jackson is flustered now, and he quickly mumbles to Bambam to sign the album for Marked For Life. Bambam does as he’s told, and he doesn’t try to make much small talk.
“Mark-hyung’s male fan?” Bambam wolf-whistles as he signs the album. “I won’t stand in the way of your happiness, then.” Directly after saying that, Bambam pushes the album over to Mark, whose fingers immediately rest on it to catch it.
“Hey,” Mark greets, and he’s even paler up close. Jackson thought that Mark’s skin already looked fair through the camera lens, but he didn’t know Mark was this fair. The contrast between Mark’s skin and his hair is stark as Jackson stands before him. “I saw you in the crowd.”
“You did?” Jackson splutters out, wanting to keel over and die then and there. It’s embarrassing enough that he’s coming off as a groupie, now Mark even claims to have noticed him looking misplaced in the sea of people.
Mark chuckles, tapping his Sharpie on his nose as he glances up at Jackson. “Okay, who am I signing this for?”
Jackson can’t bring himself to say the name of the fansite to Mark’s face. Mark is American, so he’s definitely fluent in English. Marked For Life is a pun that’s actually kind of humiliating to say now that Jackson thinks about it. “Jackson,” he says instead, sighing. “Look, this is my first fan-signing.”
“I know,” Mark quips, writing Jackson in cursive on the top left-hand corner. “I know most of the girls operating my fansites, but I’ve never seen a man.”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
Mark shrugs, drawing on the album as Jackson considers what else he can say to not come off as such a dork. “Thanks for coming today, Jackson,” Mark states when he’s finally done signing. He shuts the album and holds it out to Jackson. “I hope to see you at the next fan-signing.”
Jackson takes it from him, pursing his lips after. “Yeah, of course.”
As he walks away, too embarrassed to continue staying in the venue, Jackson flips the photobook open to the page Mark signed on. In thick black marker it’s written “To Jackson (Marked For Life)” with a large signature in the middle of the page. At the very bottom there’s a short message in Korean that Jackson barely deciphers based on the chicken scrawl. “Please take pretty photos of me!”
Jackson rolls his eyes, closing the album. He takes one look behind his shoulder as he steps out of the venue, and he makes his way home to post the preview shots from today.